September 11, 2021
Bruce Baker: NEPC Review: Charter School Funding Support for Students with Disabilities
For the National Education Policy Center, school funding expert Bruce Baker (Rutgers University) took a look at a recent paper released by the University of Arkansas’s Department of Education Reform. He found many problems. Here’s the summary:
The report Charter School Funding: Support for Students with Disabilities from the University of Arkansas Department of Education Reform, released in July 2021, asserts that
charter schools, despite serving only marginally fewer children with disabilities than Traditional Public Schools (TPS), are significantly shortchanged of funding for those children, in
addition to being significantly shortchanged on funding in general. This assertion is erroneous because the report ignores substantial differences in the classifications, needs, and costs
of children with disabilities in district-operated versus charter schools. To reach its incorrect conclusions, the report exclusively self-cites deeply flawed, self-published evidence of
a general charter school funding gap, ignoring more rigorous studies yielding contradictory findings. The report adds no value to legitimate debate over the comparability or adequacy
of general or special education funding of charter schools.