A new national study calculates how states cheat public charter schools out of money and Camden, New Jersey, where almost 60 percent of students attend a charter or renaissance school,* takes first prize for funding inequities. That’s according to “Charter School Funding: Little Progress Towards Equity in the City,” which examines all sources of revenue during the 2019-20 school year in 18 cities across the nation with a high concentration of enrollment in charter schools.

On average, charter schools in the 18 cities received 29.5 percent less in total annual per-pupil funding than traditional public schools ( TPS).  This is slightly down from the previous record high of 33 percent, which was set in the 2017-18 school year. The greatest total funding disparity is in Camden, where charter schools get $19,711 less per pupil per year than TPS. Large gaps are also found in Atlanta at $13,809; Chicago at $8,633; Indianapolis at $7,863; New York City at $7,441; and Oakland at $7,103. 

Differences in student need do not fully explain this gap, the researchers note: after controlling for variables like students with disabilities and those from low-income families, a sizable gap remains. In fact, in several cities, charter schools serve higher concentrations of high-need students yet still have massive funding gaps.

The study assigns letter grades to each of the 18 cities based on the size of the funding gap. Houston earned an “A” grade due to charters receiving slightly more funding ($417) than traditional public schools. Memphis, Denver, and Boston earned “Bs” for having relatively small gaps, $846, $1,298 and $2,691 respectively. Atlanta, Camden, Little Rock, Indianapolis, Chicago, Detroit, Oakland, and Los Angeles all earned “F” grades.

These findings come on the heels of new research from Stanford’s Center for Research on Educational Outcomes, which found that charter school students had reading and math gains that outpaced their peers in the traditional public schools they would have otherwise attended. Black and Hispanic charter school students had particularly large gains.This report is the second in a series of four. The previous report, released in April 2023, analyzed discrepancies between TPS and charter school funding in Los Angeles. The upcoming two reports, to be released this fall, will examine how charters and TPS performed relative to their funding, and how early pandemic relief funding affected TPS and charters.

*Note: the study doesn’t distinguish between “regular” charters and Camden’s “renaissance schools,” which are district/charter hybrids and are supposed to receive similar cost per pupil. I refer to them both as “charters.” From the report: “We classify these schools as charter schools in our analysis. We obtained enrollment data29 from the New Jersey DOE website and requested financial data from the New Jersey DOE Audit Summary (AudSum) data system.”