Private philanthropy can’t seem to close the funding gap between district schools and charter schools. Although charter schools as a whole raise more per-pupil from private donations than district schools, the amount may just be, as a new study from the University of Arkansas puts it, “Buckets of Water into the Ocean.”
Private donations to large charter organizations have “generated a widespread perception that charter schools receive large amounts of revenue from philanthropic giving,” the researchers write. But how does that perception square with reality?
Last year the same authors examined the broader funding gap, finding that district schools received substantially less money per student in 2011. See more on that report, and some criticisms of it, here.
The new study looks at data from 15 states, and finds private donations help charters make up some of the shortfall, bringing in an average of $246 more per student than traditional public schools received from philanthropy.
Still, the report shows, while they are more important to charters than traditional schools, philanthropic donations still make up a fairly small portion (about 2.5 percent) of overall school funding.
“The discussion of charter school philanthropy is not exactly much ado about nothing,” write the researchers, “but it is much ado about surprisingly little.”
The donations also are not spread evenly. In the 15 states covered by the study, the top 25 percent of charter schools earn 95 percent of the private donations, but educate just 32 percent of the students. This further skews the funding gap between district and charter schools.
This more recent study does not include data from Florida, but last year’s study found a more than $2,000-per-student difference between district and charter schools in the Sunshine State.
State charter school capital funds are poised to decline by $25 million, or about $100 per charter school student in the state.
This study suggests that private donations will be concentrated among a subset of top schools, and will not be enough to close the funding gap for the charter sector as a whole.
Read the full report here.
