Charter School Funding: Inequity Surges in the Cities

Public charter schools increasingly are part of both the national conversation about education policy and the local urban scene in America. Previous studies of public charter schools have examined their achievement effects focused on both the state and metropolitan levels, and funding disparities focused on the state levels. This report is the latest update to a series of studies of funding inequities concentrating on revenue disparities between charters and traditional public schools (TPS) where charters are most common: metropolitan areas across the country. This study answers two main research questions: Did public charter schools and TPS in major metropolitan areas receive equitable per-pupil funding during the 2017-18 school year? If not, what explains the funding disparity? This research indicates that urban charters tended to receive substantially less revenue on a per-pupil basis to serve their students than did traditional public schools in 2017-18. The authors find that charter school funding inequities are surging across major U.S. cities.