Public charter schools, specifically those that are their own LEAs or are part of a charter district, receive fewer dollars per pupil on average than district schools (Table 4.1). Though there are year-to-year fluctuations, a typical charter school receives an average of 80 cents for every dollar a district school receives, creating an overall average shortfall of $3,064 per student.

In general, public schools have three primary sources of funding: federal, state, and local. The relative amount of funding from each of these three sources differs between charter schools and district schools. While charter schools receive less total funding than district schools, they usually receive a higher proportion of their funding from states and a lower proportion from local sources. In the most recent year of available data (the 2018-19 school year), charter schools received approximately $3,064 less per student than district schools, on average (Table 4.1); per-pupil funding in charter schools is less than per-pupil funding in district schools for 25 of the 27 states studied (Table 4.2).

Table 4.1: Per Pupil Revenue by Sector and Year

Year Charter - Revenue Per Pupil Charter – State Charter - Local District - Revenue Per Pupil District - State District - Local Revenue Per Pupil Difference
2006-07 $11,969  67.2% 20.6% $15,577  46.5% 45.8% ($3,608)
2007-08 $12,120  67.6% 21.4% $15,771  47.4% 45.2% ($3,651)
2008-09 $12,813  64.2% 23.9% $16,258  45.9% 45.6% ($3,445)
2009-10 $13,275  59.6% 23.1% $16,026  43.0% 45.7% ($2,751)
2010-11 $12,336  63.4% 20.8% $17,105  44.2% 45.4% ($4,769)
2011-12 $12,215  60.7% 26.7% $16,371  44.0% 47.4% ($4,156)
2012-13 $11,962  62.3% 26.5% $17,030  43.4% 48.6% ($5,069)
2013-14 $11,869  63.1% 26.4% $16,953  44.6% 48.2% ($5,084)
2014-15 $11,991  62.4% 26.7% $16,930  44.3% 48.8% ($4,939)
2015-16 $12,194  63.4% 26.3% $16,627  45.2% 47.9% ($4,432)
2016-17 $12,199  60.0% 30.1% $16,743  45.5% 47.7% ($4,544)
2017-18 $11,837  59.5% 31.7% $14,632  45.3% 47.4% ($2,796)
2018-19 $11,939  59.8% 31.3% $15,004  45.0% 47.7% ($3,064)

Data from authors’ calculations using NCES Local Education Agency (School District) Finance Survey (F-33) Data 2006-07 through 2018-19. Data adjusted for inflation using 2018 constant dollars. The difference in funding among past years may be a consequence of the different number of students included in each year’s dataset.

The National Alliance obtained data on school finances from the school years 2006-07 through 2018-19 from the National Public Education Financial Survey. The finance survey only has district-level data available. To isolate the financing of each sector, we only use data from districts that are exclusively charter schools or exclusively district schools. We are not able to parse charters in instances where charters are a part of a larger LEA that includes public district schools. Because of this, we do not have the complete universe of data for either charter or district schools. The 27 states included in this analysis were selected because they have less suppressed and missing data than other states in the original survey data file, and most of their school districts or LEAs only consist of one type of school (either all charter schools or all district schools).

TABLE 4.2: PER-PUPIL REVENUE BY SECTOR AND STATE 2018-19

State Charter-Revenue Per Pupil Charter-State Charter-Local District-Revenue Per Pupil District-State District-Local Revenue Per Pupil Difference
AR $9,440  79.0% 11.2% $11,724  49.5% 39.8% ($2,285)
AZ $9,173  82.1% 8.2% $10,493  42.0% 45.3% ($1,320)
CT $14,835  80.3% 13.2% $24,943  36.3% 59.6% ($10,108)
DC $27,825  0.0% 92.9% $31,481  0.0% 91.3% ($3,656)
DE $13,071  63.8% 29.9% $18,898  63.3% 30.4% ($5,827)
GA $9,690  89.4% 2.8% $12,236  50.2% 40.9% ($2,546)
ID $8,074  85.9% 6.9% $9,252  65.9% 23.7% ($1,178)
IN $8,582  80.1% 7.7% $13,306  61.0% 31.8% ($4,724)
LA $12,390  39.2% 46.4% $12,823  44.0% 44.1% ($433)
MA $20,288  8.6% 85.7% $21,060  39.0% 56.7% ($772)
ME $13,068  86.0% 9.0% $17,538  38.2% 56.1% ($4,469)
MI $10,429  84.0% 6.0% $15,954  54.8% 38.0% ($5,525)
MN $14,875  89.5% 3.9% $16,195  64.3% 30.7% ($1,320)
MO $15,101  71.3% 17.6% $13,360  31.2% 61.2% $1,740 
MS $10,263  45.4% 37.3% $10,406  49.4% 36.7% ($143)
NC $9,092  67.4% 28.2% $10,551  61.7% 27.9% ($1,459)
NJ $17,989  9.7% 82.2% $25,142  41.0% 55.0% ($7,153)
NM $11,290  83.7% 10.1% $12,308  67.4% 19.0% ($1,018)
NV $8,353  89.5% 4.9% $13,451  40.8% 50.7% ($5,099)
OH $9,931  81.1% 5.4% $15,613  38.9% 54.5% ($5,682)
OK $6,890  86.1% 5.3% $10,616  48.0% 41.7% ($3,726)
PA $16,366  1.0% 90.8% $20,778  36.9% 58.5% ($4,412)
RI $17,092  53.8% 36.6% $19,466  35.8% 58.0% ($2,374)
SC $18,896  90.7% 4.1% $13,401  51.3% 39.9% $5,495 
TX $11,318  83.7% 5.9% $12,559  34.2% 56.0% ($1,241)
UT $8,552  88.4% 6.4% $9,762  51.2% 41.7% ($1,211)
WA $15,915  72.2% 19.1% $17,298  68.9% 25.8% ($1,383)

511 LEAs (out of 10,946 total LEAs in the 27 selected states) were removed from the analysis because they either have missing data (TOTALREV=-1), data not applicable (TOTALREV=-2), or no revenue (TOTALREV=0). 283 LEAs didn’t have any schools/enrollment in the 2018-19 school year; thus, they were also removed from the analysis. Other than the LEAs mentioned above, the National Alliance removed LEAs that consisted of both charter and district schools (103 districts in 27 states) because there is no mechanism for distinguishing allocations between charter and district sectors. That being said, 10,049 LEAs in the selected 27 states were included in this analysis, which accounts for more than 50% of all charter school students nationwide. The unweighted average was used for each state and nationwide in this analysis; the formula for Per Pupil Revenue is defined as the sum of TOTALREV/sum of student total.


About the Authors

Cynthia Xu
Yueting "Cynthia" Xu

Senior Manager, Data and Research

Yueting "Cynthia" worked as an ESL instructor and education consultant in Philadelphia prior to joining the research team at the National Alliance. During her undergraduate years at Sun Yat-sen University, she studied English language & literature and Economics. She received her master’s degree from the University of Pennsylvania with dual majors in ESL education and statistical measurement & research.

Jamison White
Jamison White

Director, Data and Research

Before joining the National Alliance in 2017, Jamison worked as a financial and small-business consultant in Pittsburgh, Boston, and the greater New York area. Jamison studied at Carnegie Mellon University and Philipps-Universität Marburg, Germany. He is a part of a founding group for a classical charter school in Washington, DC. In his free time, Jamison researches school curricula, pedagogies, and charter school models.