Dollars for Charters

The Dallas Morning News reported last week that while there still aren't many charter schools overall in Texas, the Texas Education Agency is doing its financial best to shore up the numbers. Reporter Terrence Stutz's lead is a stunner: "Charter schools in Texas have captured nearly 40% of the funds in a new $72 million school repair and renovation program -- even though they educate only 1% of students in the state." Charter schools are publicly funded schools that are largely independent of standard state guidelines, and some conservatives strongly support them as -- in theory -- promoting higher standards and competition for existing public schools.

The TEA's repair and renovation grant program comes from federal coffers, and awards up to $1 million in construction funds to schools or school districts with special needs -- for example, low tax bases -- or no other means to raise the money. The federal guidelines indicate charter schools should be given special consideration, but the TEA apparently went overboard: Of the 431 districts and charter schools which applied for grants, 57 school districts (16% of those that applied) and 47 charter schools (54% of those that applied) got them. The charter schools got $28 million overall (38.8% of the total funds available), yet have a collective enrollment of about 11,300 students -- about 1.1% of all public school students in Texas. That works out to about $2,482 per student in the charters, and $89 per student in some desperately poor school districts -- despite the fact that the charters, on average, have performed worse in state accountability ratings then conventional public schools. And you thought we couldn't solve problems by throwing money at them.