Charters spend more on administration, less in the classroom

by David Safier

This study confirms what I have found in my own research. Charters tend to spend more on administration than school districts, leaving less for the classroom. So much for the so-called "efficiency" of charter schools or the "bureaucratic nightmare" of school districts.

This study comes out of the Teachers College at Columbia University, looking at Michigan education spending numbers.

Researchers David Arsen, of Michigan State University, and Yongmei Ni, of the University of Utah, found that charters spend $774 more per pupil on administration, and $1,140 less on instruction, than do traditional publics. To come up with their estimates, the authors analyze the level and source of funding for charters and traditional publics, and how they spend money, breaking it out by function. They then use a statistical method known as regression analysis to control for factors that could skew their comparisons of spending on administration and instruction in various schools.

[snip]

"Charters' outsized administrative spending … is simultaneously matched by exceptionally low instructional spending," the study says. "If one were searching for a contemporary reform to shift resources from classroom instruction to adminsitration, it is hard to imagine one that could accomplish this as decisively as charter schools have done in Michigan."

Charters nationwide have no better academic record than "traditional" district schools. And given charters' bureaucrat-heavy spending, they make school districts look like lean, mean education machines.