Spending at Co-Located New York Schools

Kim Gittleson:

Buried on the Department of Education’s website is a page that lists per pupil spending on a school-wide, district-wide, and system-wide basis. Using this information, as well as expense data from the 2007-2008 audits and the recent Independent Budget Office report, we compared spending by charter schools and traditional public schools that are located in the same building.
We found that charter schools spent $365 less per pupil than their co-located traditional public schools in 2007-2008. You can see our calculations in a workbook here.
Some notes on our methodology: