Charter school students outscore their traditional public school peers on standardized math and reading exams and would do 40% better if they had equal funding per pupil, a new study indicates.
A research team from the University of Arkansas Department of Education Reform published the study Wednesday. They based their estimates on federal and academic statistics for nine cities covering school funding, student demographics and eighth-grade math and reading scores on the National Assessment for Educational Progress.
The researchers found eighth-grade students in charter schools scored an average of 2.4 points higher in reading and 1.3 points better in math on recent NAEP examinations with 30% less funding — about $7,150 per pupil — than students in public school districts.
According to the study, charter school students would score an additional 4.4 points higher in reading and 4.7 points higher in math if they had the same money allocated per pupil as public school districts.
“The big takeaway is that most urban charter schools are finding a way to get acceptable or better achievement results at lower cost to taxpayers,” Patrick J. Wolf, a University of Arkansas education policy professor and lead author of the report, told The Washington Times.
“A lot of cities are steering their resources to failing traditional public schools, but they’d get better results if they steered more to public charter schools,” he added.
The nine cities covered in the study were Denver; Houston; Indianapolis; New Orleans; New York City; San Antonio; Washington; Memphis, Tennessee; and Camden, New Jersey.
The study found that the Camden Public Schools spent nearly $40,000 per pupil in the 2019-2020 academic year and got slightly above-average testing results.
It noted that 90% of charter school students in Camden lived in poverty and yet scored 6.9 points higher in reading and 7.5 points higher in math than classmates in the public school district, where just 56% of students lived in poverty.
In New Orleans, where the city converted its public school district into a charter school system after the devastation of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, eighth graders achieved higher test scores than their peers in both charter schools and traditional districts in other cities.
New Orleans spent just over $12,000 per student on its charter schools, well below the national average for public schools.
Meanwhile, Denver spent $1,298 more per student on the traditional public school district than on charter schools, but eighth-grade charter students scored over a point higher than their Denver Public Schools classmates on both the math and reading exams.
These figures did not surprise Andrea Haitz, a Colorado mother of three and president of the school board in Mesa County, located about 250 miles west of Denver.
“Charter schools provide diverse educational choices for parents, offering families options to tailor their child’s learning experience to their specific needs,” Ms. Haitz, who was not involved in the study, told The Times. “This choice can lead to increased parental involvement and support for the school, positively impacting student performance.”
The Times reached out to leading teachers unions for comment on the study.
The National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, a Washington-based advocacy group, welcomed the study.
“Even as they are chronically underfunded, charter schools are some of the highest performing public schools in the nation,” Nina Rees, president of the alliance and a former Department of Education official under the George W. Bush administration, said in an email. “One can only imagine what they might do with equitable funding.”
Mr. Wolf noted that charter schools in the nine cities recorded higher test scores with less administrative and support staff, more students living in poverty and fewer sports and arts facilities, even though they were also less likely to have special education students.
He said 60% of total funding in charter schools goes directly into the classroom — including teacher salaries, classroom aides and learning technology — compared with only 49% of the funds at traditional public schools, which spend more on buildings and support staff.
“In our ideal world, we would support a scale that calculates a funding amount for each individual student based on their learning challenge levels,” Mr. Wolf told The Times. “Every school would be getting resources proportional to student dynamics.”
• Sean Salai can be reached at ssalai@washingtontimes.com.