{"id":15660,"date":"2012-08-29T14:47:10","date_gmt":"2012-08-29T18:47:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/?p=15660"},"modified":"2012-08-29T14:47:10","modified_gmt":"2012-08-29T18:47:10","slug":"cato-the-charter-school-paradox","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/15660\/cato-the-charter-school-paradox\/","title":{"rendered":"CATO: The Charter School Paradox?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Adam Schaeffer of the Cato Institute argues a provocative thesis about the effect of public charter schools<\/a>:<\/p>\n

How can charter schools spend less money on average than regular public schools and yet cost taxpayers more overall at the state level? How can charter schools increase educational options and diversity in the public school system and yet decrease options and diversity in education overall? And how can some charter schools outperform regular public schools on average and yet decrease achievement overall?<\/p>\n

I call these outcomes the Charter School Paradox, but it is only a paradox if we take a very narrow view of the effects of charter schools. When we expand our perspective to include their effects on private education, we find that these seeming contradictions are really the unintended consequences of inadequate, public-sector-only reform. On average, charter schools may marginally improve the public education system, but in the process they are wreaking havoc on private education. Charter schools take a significant portion of their students from private schools, causing a drop in private enrollment, driving some schools entirely out of business, and thereby raising public costs while potentially diminishing competition and diversity in our education system overall.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Schaeffer\u2019s commentary<\/a> is based on a larger study<\/a> published by Cato colleague Richard Buddin.<\/p>\n

Some of the key findings of Buddin\u2019s study are that public charters in urban areas draw one-fourth to one-third of their student bodies from private schools.\u00a0 The direct cost of these private-to-public migrants is estimated to be $1.8 billion a year (as of 2008) in new spending.<\/p>\n

According to Schaeffer and Buddin, unless education reformers enact \u201cgood private school choice reform, such as education tax credits,\u201d expanding the number of public charter schools could \u201ccannibalize the private sector, increase public costs, and decrease options and competition.\u201d<\/p>\n

Conservative governors like Indiana\u2019s Mitch Daniels, Louisiana\u2019s Bobby Jindal and others have been rightly praised<\/a> for reforming their public education system by increasing the school choice options for parents.\u00a0 Going forward, they and others would do well to continue pursuing policies that protect private education while improving its public counterpart.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Adam Schaeffer of the Cato Institute argues a provocative thesis about the effect of public charter schools: How can charter schools spend less money on average than regular public schools and yet cost taxpayers more overall at the state level? How can charter schools increase educational options and diversity in the public school system and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[3785,627,2473,231,64,3787,1447,3786],"class_list":["post-15660","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-posts","tag-adam-schaeffer","tag-cato-institute","tag-charter-school","tag-choice","tag-education","tag-private","tag-reform","tag-richard-buddin"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15660","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15660"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15660\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15666,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15660\/revisions\/15666"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15660"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15660"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15660"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}