Today Kris Nordstrom published a post on NC Policy Watch concerning a newly released study from Economic Research Initiatives at Duke University about how charter schools in North Carolina have negatively affected financing for traditional public schools.

In “New study calculates charter schools’ negative financial impact on North Carolina school districts,” Nordstrom starts,

“A new report from Duke University’s Helen “Sunny” Ladd and University of Rochester’s John D. Singleton uses North Carolina data to conclusively show the negative impact charter schools have on the finances of traditional, inclusive public schools.

The report confirms what traditional, inclusive public school advocates have been saying for years: charter schools drain resources from our public school system. School districts face a number of fixed costs such as utility costs and central office administration. When a student leaves the traditional public school system for a charter school, the school district loses the average funding for a student. But the district still incurs these fixed costs.”

A link to the actual study is included in Nordstrom’s report. You can download a copy of the pdf.

The abstract is below.

A significant criticism of the charter school movement is that funding for charter schools diverts money away from traditional public schools. As shown in prior work by Bifulco and Reback (2014) for two urban districts in New York, the magnitude of such adverse fiscal externalities depends in part on the nature of state and local funding policies. In this paper, we build on their approach to examine the fiscal effects of charter schools on both urban and non-urban school districts in North Carolina. We base our analysis on detailed balance sheet information for a sample of school districts that experienced significant charter entry since the statewide cap on charters was raised in 2011. This detailed budgetary information permits us to estimate a range of fiscal impacts using a variety of different assumptions. We find a large and negative fiscal impact from $500-$700 per pupil in our one urban school district and somewhat smaller, but still significant, fiscal externalities on the non-urban districts in our sample.

So, what does our state superintendent have to say about this? That is if he read it.

What does Lt. Dan Forest have to say about this?

What about the champion of charter school growth, Sen. Jerry Tillman?