School Choice or Best Systems_ What Improves Education_ - Margaret C. Wang [18]
Overregulation and Underfunding
Despite their impressive accomplishments, charter schools’ full potential is handicapped by lower funding than is given to traditional schools and by regulations from which charters were supposed to have been freed. Charter schools may have greater independence from state and local regulations than traditional schools, but they are still limited and heavily regulated in most of the jurisdictions in which they are allowed.
According to 2003 data from the Education Commission of the States, more than two-thirds (68 percent) of states and the District of Columbia have caps on the number of charter schools. More than half (55 percent) report that a portion of charter schools is bound by school district collective bargaining agreements with unions, and 85 percent report requirements regarding certification of charter school teachers.43 Ironically, charter schools were originally proposed as a means of extricating schools from such stifling regulatory and contractual constraints .44
The State of the Charter Movement 2005 also reveals gross inequities even considering the larger percentages of special needs and poor students in charter schools (who by federal law should be entitled to extra expenditures): “Many state charter laws provide significantly less than full funding to public charter schools.”45 Charter schools received $5,688 per pupil in operating dollars, on average, according to a national survey in 2002-03. Traditional public schools, by contrast, received $8,529, which resulted in a disparity of $2,841 per student, or 33 percent less funding for charters. Another report46 also showed large funding disparities between charter schools and traditional public schools. In 26 of the 27 communities examined, charter schools were underfunded in amounts ranging from $1,000 to nearly $5,000 per student.
After weighting each state by its charter enrollment, the Progress Analytics Institute and Public Impact found that the “average discrepancy” was $1,801 per student, or 21.7 percent less funding for charter schools than for district public schools. Using 2002-03 data, the report categorizes four levels of funding disparity in the 16 states and District of Columbia included in the study:
The most equitable funding for charter schools was in Minnesota and New Mexico, where there was no more than a five percent funding gap. A “moderate” funding gap (5 to 14.9 percent less for charter schools) occurred in four states (North Carolina, Florida, Michigan, and Texas) and four districts. Larger funding gaps ranged from 15 to 24.9 percent less funding for charter schools in five states (Colorado, Arizona, New York, the District of Columbia, and Illinois) and nine districts. Severe inequities of more than 25 percent between charters and district-operated schools were in six states (Missouri, Wisconsin, Georgia, Ohio, California, and South Carolina) and 13 districts.47
With the bulk of rigorous studies showing higher levels of achievement among charter school students, and finance studies showing that charter schools receive lower levels of per pupil funding than do traditional public schools, it is clear that charter schools are able to do more with less. They are both more effective and more efficient or productive. Charter schools, moreover, might do even better were they set free of more government regulations, as originally intended.
Conclusion
Despite the caps that states and districts have placed on their numbers and enrollment, charter schools have proliferated since their first appearance in Minnesota in 1992. Charter parents clearly prefer charter schools to traditional public schools, a preference revealed by surveys as well as long waitlists for many individual charter schools. As parents and citizens learn more about