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. Though there are year-to-year fluctuations, a typical charter school LEA receives an average of 81 cents for every dollar a district school receives, creating an overall average shortfall of $2,878 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 2019-20 school year), charter schools that are their own LEA received approximately $2,878 less per student than district schools, on average (Table 4.1); per-pupil funding in charter school LEAs is less than per-pupil funding in district schools for 24 of the 28 states for which we have data (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 | $12,186 | 67.2% | 20.6% | $15,859 | 46.5% | 45.8% | ($3,673) |
| 2007-08 | $12,340 | 67.6% | 21.4% | $16,057 | 47.4% | 45.2% | ($3,717) |
| 2008-09 | $13,045 | 64.2% | 23.9% | $16,553 | 45.9% | 45.6% | ($3,507) |
| 2009-10 | $13,516 | 59.6% | 23.1% | $16,316 | 43.0% | 45.7% | ($2,801) |
| 2010-11 | $12,560 | 63.4% | 20.8% | $17,415 | 44.2% | 45.4% | ($4,855) |
| 2011-12 | $12,436 | 60.7% | 26.7% | $16,668 | 44.0% | 47.4% | ($4,231) |
| 2012-13 | $12,179 | 62.3% | 26.5% | $17,339 | 43.4% | 48.6% | ($5,160) |
| 2013-14 | $12,084 | 63.1% | 26.4% | $17,260 | 44.6% | 48.2% | ($5,176) |
| 2014-15 | $12,208 | 62.4% | 26.7% | $17,237 | 44.3% | 48.8% | ($5,028) |
| 2015-16 | $12,415 | 63.4% | 26.3% | $16,928 | 45.2% | 47.9% | ($4,513) |
| 2016-17 | $12,420 | 60.0% | 30.1% | $17,046 | 45.5% | 47.7% | ($4,626) |
| 2017-18 | $12,051 | 59.5% | 31.7% | $14,897 | 45.3% | 47.4% | ($2,846) |
| 2018-19 | $12,155 | 59.8% | 31.3% | $15,276 | 45.0% | 47.7% | ($3,121) |
| 2019-20 | $12,600 | 61.4% | 30.8% | $15,478 | 47.3% | 45.5% | ($2,878) |
Charter School Funding in States
The National Alliance obtained data on school finances from the school years 2006-07 through 2019-20 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 LEAs that are exclusively charter schools or exclusively district schools. We are unable to include charter schools that are part of an LEA containing both charter schools and district schools due to the district-level reporting of data. Because of this, we do not have the complete universe of data for either charter or district schools. The 28 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 2019-20
| State | Charter-Revenue Per Pupil | Charter-State | Charter-Local | District-Revenue Per Pupil | District-State | District-Local | Revenue Per Pupil Difference |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AL | $11,566 | 72.1% | 13.3% | $11,731 | 56.7% | 32.6% | ($165) |
| AR | $9,566 | 81.5% | 8.7% | $11,674 | 49.4% | 40.1% | ($2,108) |
| AZ | $9,233 | 85.8% | 6.9% | $11,163 | 43.7% | 44.2% | ($1,930) |
| CA | $12,525 | 68.1% | 27.6% | $16,892 | 51.6% | 41.0% | ($4,367) |
| CT | $13,628 | 82.1% | 11.0% | $25,257 | 36.3% | 60.0% | ($11,628) |
| DC | $28,708 | 0.0% | 92.5% | $31,555 | 0.0% | 91.8% | ($2,846) |
| DE | $13,975 | 61.9% | 32.0% | $20,235 | 62.2% | 31.8% | ($6,260) |
| GA | $10,934 | 90.3% | 3.1% | $12,900 | 50.9% | 40.8% | ($1,966) |
| ID | $9,416 | 77.4% | 9.6% | $9,710 | 66.0% | 23.7% | ($294) |
| IN | $10,536 | 74.7% | 8.9% | $13,451 | 61.9% | 31.2% | ($2,915) |
| LA | $13,123 | 39.5% | 45.7% | $13,069 | 45.4% | 43.5% | $55 |
| MA | $20,143 | 10.8% | 83.9% | $21,279 | 42.0% | 53.5% | ($1,135) |
| ME | $11,921 | 92.0% | 3.1% | $17,933 | 38.6% | 56.4% | ($6,012) |
| MI | $10,490 | 83.9% | 5.9% | $16,609 | 53.6% | 38.5% | ($6,119) |
| MN | $15,059 | 89.8% | 3.5% | $16,650 | 64.2% | 30.6% | ($1,592) |
| MO | $15,531 | 64.4% | 24.4% | $12,572 | 31.8% | 59.4% | $2,959 |
| MS | $10,860 | 45.9% | 34.4% | $10,801 | 50.0% | 36.7% | $59 |
| NC | $9,447 | 66.7% | 28.9% | $10,789 | 61.6% | 27.9% | ($1,342) |
| NJ | $17,864 | 10.7% | 82.0% | $25,520 | 41.9% | 54.5% | ($7,656) |
| NM | $12,449 | 82.9% | 8.4% | $14,211 | 68.3% | 16.1% | ($1,763) |
| OH | $10,809 | 79.8% | 5.9% | $15,522 | 38.1% | 55.3% | ($4,713) |
| OK | $7,934 | 78.2% | 14.1% | $10,958 | 47.7% | 41.8% | ($3,024) |
| PA | $17,137 | 1.0% | 91.2% | $20,795 | 37.8% | 57.8% | ($3,658) |
| RI | $17,312 | 58.5% | 32.4% | $19,859 | 35.4% | 58.4% | ($2,547) |
| SC | $18,545 | 91.6% | 4.1% | $13,672 | 51.5% | 40.0% | $4,873 |
| TX | $12,444 | 80.6% | 8.8% | $13,050 | 37.4% | 53.6% | ($605) |
| UT | $8,905 | 90.3% | 4.6% | $10,037 | 51.4% | 41.6% | ($1,133) |
| WA | $16,572 | 67.8% | 24.9% | $17,684 | 70.3% | 24.1% | ($1,112) |
Out of 13,312 total LEAs listed in the F-33 survey data for the 28 selected states, 740 LEAs were removed from the analysis due to either missing or not applicable revenue data (TOTALREV = -2, -1, 0). After removing all LEAs with negative and zero total revenue, among the remaining LEAs, 510 LEAs had suppressed or missing enrollment data in the 2019-20 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 (260 districts in 28 states) because there is no mechanism for distinguishing allocations between charter and district sectors. That being said, 11,802 LEAs in the selected 28 states were included in this analysis, which accounts for approximately 65% 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.
Charter School Funding in Cities
While our dataset limits our ability to provide a comprehensive understanding of charter school funding regardless of their LEA status, new data from the University of Arkansas does include both types of charter schools. In August 2023, Pattrick Wolf, Ph.D. and team at the University of Arkansas released a new study examining charter school funding across 18 cities. The University of Arkansas team has been investigating charter school funding equity since the 2002-03 school year. The latest research scrutinizes the 2019-20 school year school finance data from Atlanta, Boston, Camden, Chicago, Denver, Detroit, Indianapolis, Houston, Little Rock, Los Angeles, Memphis, New Orleans, New York City, Oakland, Phoenix, San Antonio, Tulsa, and Washington, D.C.
The study found that in 2019-20, charter schools across 18 cities in 16 states, on average, received $7,147 less funding per pupil than district schools. This equates to 29.5% less per pupil compared to district schools in these cities. Compared to the previous study that examined the data from the 2017-18 school year, there has been an over 3% decrease in funding disparity between charter schools and district schools. However, the funding gap between the two sectors has remained wide and consistent since 2002-03, with little progress made on funding inequities since the inception of the study.
About the Authors
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.
Miguel Zarate
Fellow, Data and Research
Miguel Zarate serves as a fellow with the National Alliance for the Data and Research team. He completed his undergraduate studies at the University of Texas Rio Valley in the fall of 2020, and subsequently earned his Master of Business Administration with a specialization in Business Analytics in the fall of 2022.