Evaluating Research That Alleges Funding Disparities Between Charter and District Schools

• Inadequate documentation of data • Misunderstanding of financial transfers • Invalid conflation of individual schools and school districts as units of analysis • Invalid comparisons of student populations • Invalid comparisons of the functions of charter and district public schools • Unaccounted-for charter revenues • Neglect of the literature on charter school finances . [...] May, released by the Department of Education Reform at the University of Arkansas.1 In doing so, this policy memo provides a guide for stakeholders to evaluate the accuracy and transparency of research, such as the Los Angeles report from the University of Arkansas think tank, that claims to show charter school funding inequities. [...] In his 2017 NEPC review of the report Charter School Funding: Inequity in New York City, pub- lished by the University of Arkansas Department of Education Reform, on supposed charter funding disparities in New York City, Clive Belfield notes that the report found a previously undocumented pass-through of hundreds of millions of dollars.16 This report, however, did not address the implications of t. [...] Invalid Comparisons of the Functions of Charter and District Public Schools The 2020 report Charter School Funding: Inequity Surges in the Cities—published by the School Choice Demonstration Project, Department of Education Reform, University of Ar- kansas and alleging charter school funding disparity—justifies its revenue-based approach (emphases as published): An analysis based on all revenues,. [...] Specifically: The data documentation lacks the thoroughness of other, superior studies on charter school funding; comparisons of student populations are inadequate to support the conclusions the report; there is no acknowledgement of the different functions of charter and public district schools, and how those differences affect finances; and the literature on charter school finances is ignored, o.