The Walton Family Foundation reports,
Peer-reviewed, forthcoming research finds that charter school students receive an average of $4,000 less for their education than peers in traditional public schools in five major cities, all of which are foundation Investment Sites. While the gap is widening in some cities and narrowing in others, the research finds that traditional public school students receive substantially more local, state and federal funds than those who attend public charter schools.
For the pointer, I thank a loyal reader. As you know, I am very skeptical that any educational intervention can disprove the null hypothesis of no improvement in long-term outcomes. By the same token, I am highly disposed to believe that we could lower spending considerably without affecting outcomes. In my view, charter schools might be a tool for accomplishing that. However, keep in mind that from an interest-group perspective, maintaining spending on schools at the highest possible level is more important than anything having to do with outcomes.
Note also Jason Bedrick’s summary of a report summarizing many studies that find school choice either having modest benefits or no effect–but never showing a negative effect.
I strongly agree with you that we do not yet know a way to make the students do better (best hope so far id direct instruction and that is cheap), so we should focus on other things like reducing costs. Another thing would be reducing violence in the schools (bullying).
It seems to me to be too much to ask schools to improve students academics much. I think that we could target what they learn better teaching them not more stuff but more useful stuff.
Politically, there is also very little momentum behind a “cheaper schools” initiative. Anyone who tries will get skewered by opponents as being anti-education.
Both of these are part of the rationale behind school vouchers. Individual parents can make decisions that are politically infeasible when they are put to a vote.