Budget cuts muffle charter growth
Successful schools like Aspire feel the pinch
California’s low funding of public schools is curbing the expansion of charter schools and making them more dependent on philanthropy to support their operations and their plans for growth. Because roughly one out of six charter schools is located here, California’s low education funding is distorting the national perspective of charter schools’ financial development.
That’s the conclusion of Location, Location, Location: How would a high-performing charter school network fare in different states? – a report that looks at how much Oakland-based Aspire Public Schools hypothetically would be funded were its schools located in 23 other states with charter schools. Financially, Aspire would have been about on par in two states and much better off in 18 states. In those states, it would have had an average operating surplus of $1,410 per student or 12.2 percent – 23 times the frugal margin of $60 per student or 0.6 percent on which Aspire operates 30 schools in California.
Ball State University estimates that charter schools nationwide receive 19 percent less funding than traditional public schools. In California, the disparity is less than in most states: 9.2 percent. But Aspire would still be better off elsewhere, because California’s school funding is 20 percent below the national average and among the seven lowest funded states. The report says that if Aspire were in Massachusetts or New York, it would have received $3,000 more per student for similar operations.
The report, co-authored by Chris Lozier, COO of a Chicago charter school network, and Andrew Rotherham, a well-known blogger and co-founder of the consulting group Bellwether Educational Partners, was funded by the Gates Foundation. (Don Shalvey, a Gates Foundation VP, is also chairman of Aspire’s board of directors.) It was released on the eve of Aspire’s scheduled hearing before the State Board of Education on its application to broaden its authority to open charter schools statewide. I hear that the hearing may be postponed for a few months.
Nationally recognized non-profit Aspire operates 30 charter schools for 10,000 students in low-income, minority neighborhoods in the Bay Area, Sacramento, Stockton, and Los Angeles. Its overall API score of 824 makes it the highest-performing school system with more than 20 schools serving high-poverty students. It reports that 95 percent of its high school graduates were accepted to a four-year college.
Aspire typifies the plight of most high-performing charter networks. It relies on philanthropy for 7 percent of its revenue, to help operate the central office and support staff for the schools, said Stephanie Wilson, Aspire’s chief of staff. It’s otherwise dependent on the state’s per-pupil allotment. Out of that total, 13 percent goes to renting facilities – a burden district schools don’t face. Although schools are theoretically entitled to school facilities for free under Proposition 39, Aspire hasn’t invoked the law because of its flaws, such as a district’s ability to force charter schools to move locations every year. Charter schools also face a new burden: high interest charges on loans they must take because the state is deferring on payments by months.
Although it is moving ahead with its statewide charter petition, Wilson said that Aspire has put off its immediate plan to open three to five schools per year because of the state’s cuts in education funding. “We will grow when it does not negatively impact our existing schools and students,” she said.
Some may make the case that Aspire’s academic success is evidence that California’s schools don’t need more money. Wilson, Rotherham and other charter advocates don’t buy that argument.
“We have it tough in California; we are underfunding education, and charters in particular,” Wilson said. “It would take only small changes to level the playing field so that students aren’t shortchanged by choosing the schools they go to.”
Aspire already has longer school days and lower student-to-teacher ratios than most traditional schools. Wilson said that, with more state funding, Aspire would first expand tutoring and after-school programs, provide guidance and help for Aspire alumni in college, and add more support staff for teachers.
As for charter school growth, the report concludes: “Until states overhaul both their education and charter school finance policies, no one should be surprised that, absent help from philanthropy, many schools, even the very best ones, will operate on tight margins and struggle with growth and scale.”
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Red flag on using college matriculation rates as a gauge of supposed success. That’s wrong and needs to be stopped, since it furthers the wrongheaded and damaging notion that college is the only successful path for high school graduates. That further indicates that career-bound students, and their schools, are failures. (Also, by the way, it’s not hard to manipulate, and since we have no idea how those students do in college, it’s not very meaningful.)
And while we’re discussing labeling schools “successful,” Oakland’s Perimeter Primate blog has raised the question of the suspicious gap between one Aspire high school’s API (a hair shy of the gold-standard 800) and its students’ wan SAT scores:
http://perimeterprimate.blogspot.com/2011/01/not-all-its-cracked-up-to-be.html
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The per-pupil revenue figures shown in Figure 1 of the report show Aspire at $9,987. I’m not sure where the researchers got this data, nor the comparative data from other states, but very few charter schools in California enjoy revenues anywhere near the $9,987 level. Thus, if the data from other states in the report is accurate, the report significantly understates the California charter school financial challenge.
Most California charters receive funding in the low $6 thousand to mid $7 thousand per student range–and funding can climb to the $8 thousand range if the school serves very high proportions (>70 percent) of low-income students and qualifies for partial reimbursement of their facilities rent expenses. New charter schools serving elementary grades really get the shaft now that the California Department of Education refuses to allow them to apply for the large K-3 Class Size Reduction program.
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Wow Caroline. It is very impressive that you can never accept any positive stories about Charter Schools without these ridiculous attacks. I believe the article also mentioned their average API –”Its overall API score of 824 makes it the highest-performing school system with more than 20 schools serving high-poverty students”. Aspire also its college matriculation data, because that is their goal as a charter organization. If it were a vocation school, I would think that using other data would be appropriate.
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Oops.. .
meant to say “Aspire also uses it’s . . . .”
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The Bellweather report rightly points out the serious inequities that California charter schools face on the funding front. Those issues—including costs for facilities, deferred payments from the state, charter school access to working capital financing—continue to be a top priority for the California Charter Schools Association (for which, in the interest of full disclosure, I am the Interim Senior Vice President of Communications).
That being said, charters continue to grow in spite of the funding challenges they face. California charter schools continue to grow in popularity, and register unparalleled growth. In 2010, California saw its most significant increase, with 115 new charter schools opening their doors at the beginning of the school year. That is the highest one-year growth in charter school history, not just in California but in the nation.
We are building momentum each year, and anticipate another strong round of charter school openings for the 2011 school year. As this article points out, though, it is possible that growth would be even greater if the financial roadblocks were removed. We must find a way to make it easier for high impact schools, networks, and charter management organizations like Aspire to replicate.
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Seems like the logical solution is to level the playing field and balance the equation. Give charter schools equivalent per student funding while granting comprehensive schools the same operational freedoms the charters enjoy.
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How about we take a big step back and focus on the fact that none of our public schools have enough public money to fund its priorities…in district, charter or any other hybrid.
As the article quotes “We have it tough in California; we are underfunding education, and charters in particular,” Wilson said. “It would take only small changes to level the playing field so that students aren’t shortchanged by choosing the schools they go to.”
We are shortchanging our kids – in or out of charters. The charter debate is clouding the underlying problem, and the solution. We need fundamental finance reform in California – for ALL its schools and for ALL its students.
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Caroline,
I ask you what “gauges of success” you might suggest to evaluate schools. As a Community College Trustee, I am concerned about the large amounts of money allocated to prepare HS diploma-holding students to meet entry-level CC standards.
As Community Colleges transition to focus on student success, not just student access, connecting student performance from PK through 16 is gaining attention.
I appreciate reading your perspectives and I believe it can be valuable to question data.
- Chris
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My comment on reversing the mindless tendency to judge schools’ success by their college admission rate was also aimed at the big picture — as discussed on other threads here quite recently.
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Indeed, there should be many post-graduate options for high school students other than college. No disagreement there. But when a charter school whose mission is to send students to 4-year colleges accomplishes that goal, it should be applauded and studied.
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John,
You are right that Andy Rotherham (an some others) don’t buy the argument that Aspire’s success is evidence that California schools don’t need more money. Rotherham’s focus here is simply on the disparity between charter and non-charter public school funding. Yet them not “buying” this argument doesn’t mean it cannot — or should not — be made.
This report shows yet another example how an organization — Aspire here – can make do with spending about $8,300 per student in Calif. instead of the average Calif. public spending of about $9,200 and still deliver “more expensive [than regular public school] educational programming to its students due to factors like extended school days and years, lower student-to-teacher ratios, and more labor-intensive advisory programs.” (p. 3) And with impressive academic results to boot.
Add to that the fact that public schools, unlike charters, generally do not need margins for future expansion like Aspire does, and I do think this does serve as an evidence that our schools are run in an ineffective fiscal manner (academic too, but that’s for another day.) Until we fix that, our schools will always “need more money.” Which really means absolutely nothing.
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Yes, when a school whose goal is to send students to college succeeds in that, it should absolutely be applauded. But schools should not be judged based on how many students they send to college, or compared “good” vs. “bad” based on how many students they send to college — using college-going rates as a gauge of success in that way is wrongheaded. The education conversation has mindlessly falling into doing that, and I’m challenging it. (In agreement with Ze’ev Wurman and Eric Premack, I believe!)
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Caroline, your point is taken, but I still haven’t seen the answer to the question as to what you think should be used to measure the success of schools . . .
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I don’t have any easy answer. I don’t think there IS an easy answer. I certainly look at test scores, though I’m well aware that they’re not the only gauge either.
But it’s wrongheaded and harmful — even nonsensical — to use college-going rates as the measure. Test scores make far more sense than that.
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I agree with Caroline that, in general, college going is not the measure of school success I support. The situation is different — and clearer — for charters. Their goals are spelled out in their charters, and that is what they should be measured by. After all, that is what they promised the parents who enrolled their children with the charter.
Given that Aspire sets college going as the main goal of its charters — it even trademarked the slogan “College for Certain” that prominently figures on Aspire’s web pages — I see the measure of college going as completely appropriate in Aspire’s case.
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Just as a matter of clarification: If my K-8 public school distirct received funding at the per pupil level like charter schools do here in California, my school district would have access to 3.3 million dollars more in unrestricted funding. And while the state slows or stops my district’s funding stream, the district’s flow of cash out to charter schools continues unabated.
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