Report Does Not Provide Useful Comparisons of Funding Between Charters and District Schools

BOULDER, CO (January 21, 2025)—A recent Bellwether report explores how much public financing charter schools receive and whether they are funded fairly compared to traditional public schools, specifically in the District of Columbia. After finding disparities, it offers a series of recommendations to reduce those disparities, but upon review these findings and recommendations are not well-supported.

In his review of Resource Realities: A Comparative Analysis of Charter and District School Funding in Washington, D.C., Clive Belfield of Queens College, City University of New York determines that the report’s oversimplistic analyses account for the unfounded conclusions.

Using tabulations of funding across charter and public schools to describe funding disparities in DC from 2022 to 2025, the report finds that the district’s public schools are more generously funded—that they have access to additional funding streams, received extra pandemic funding, have more capital funding, and pay teachers much higher salaries.

Although these tabulations themselves appear to be accurate, there is no proof that charter schools are underfunded in relation to their services and needs—or that they should, in fact, be funded at the same dollar amounts as public schools. Schools in these two sectors are responsible for providing different services and serving different students, and they often receive resources from different sources.

In sum, the report does not apply a valid method of comparison and thus provides no way to determine if DC charter schools are funded at the “right level” or what that level should be. As a result, Professor Belfield concludes, it is of limited use to policymakers—except perhaps within the district as an introductory or preliminary study.

Find the review, by Clive Belfield, at:
https://nepc.colorado.edu/review/funding-disparities

Find Resource Realities: A Comparative Analysis of Charter and District School Funding in Washington, D.C., written by Krista Kaput, Titilayo Tinubu Ali, and Jennifer O’Neal Schiess and published by Bellwether, at: https://bellwether.org/publications/resource-realities/

 

NEPC Reviews (https://nepc.colorado.edu/reviews) provide the public, policymakers, and the press with timely, academically sound reviews of selected publications. NEPC Reviews are made possible in part by support provided by the Great Lakes Center for Education Research and Practice: http://www.greatlakescenter.org

The National Education Policy Center (NEPC), a university research center housed at the University of Colorado Boulder School of Education, sponsors research, produces policy briefs, and publishes expert third-party reviews of think tank reports. NEPC publications are written in accessible language and are intended for a broad audience that includes academic experts, policymakers, the media, and the general public. Our mission is to provide high-quality information in support of democratic deliberation about education policy. We are guided by the belief that the democratic governance of public education is strengthened when policies are based on sound evidence and support a multiracial society that is inclusive, kind, and just. Visit us at: http://nepc.colorado.edu

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