Q: Do charter schools increase or decrease districts’ total revenues per pupil?
A: Charter schools may increase or decrease districts’ total revenues per student, depending on who authorizes them, how they impact the local housing market, and the policies that states and localities adopt.
Q: Do charter schools increase or decrease districts’ instructional spending?
A: Competition from charters may push districts to increase or decrease their instructional spending (though it has mostly positive effects on specific instructional inputs such as teacher salaries).
Q: Do charter schools make districts more or less efficient?
A: While few studies address the efficiency question directly, what we do know suggests that charters make affected school districts more efficient, at least in the long run.
The Bottom Line
In the long run, districts will adjust to charter-driven enrollment declines, just as they do when their enrollments fluctuate for other reasons, so the challenge for policymakers is managing any transition costs—that is, any temporary fiscal or operational challenges that districts face—in a way that is fair to students and taxpayers.