differences autonomy included “efficiency” outcomes better generate

All charter schools in Milwaukee are non-religious and prohibited from discriminating or choosing their
students. Because of the relative quality of charter schools, charters often cannot meet demand. In
these situations, lotteries are held to determine admission.
Most relevant for this analysis, the amount of per-pupil funding a school receives varies by school
type. For the 2014-15 school year that is the subject of this analysis, non-instrumentality and independent
charter schools received $8,075 for each student that they enrolled. Instrumentality charters,
on the other hand, receive the same per-pupil funding as regular public schools. While determining
that funding is more complex 11 , the number is far greater regardless of the calculation method chosen.
We utilize the per pupil revenue limit for Milwaukee Public Schools provided by the Department of
Public Instruction, $10,261. 12 This figure for public and instrumentality charters is $2,186 more than
students in other charter schools receive. 13
These differences raise questions about whether all Milwaukee charters are really “charters” in the
sense that founders of the charter movement intended. Charter schools have their origin in a 1974
paper by University of Massachusetts professor Ray Budde. 14 Budde’s original conception was
somewhat different than modern understandings of school choice, focused on granting charters to
teachers with unique ideas within existing public schools. But at its core, Budde’s motivation was a
reduction of the power of school administrators to micro-manage and homogenize the process of education.
Said Budde, “No one - not the superintendent or the principal or any central office supervisors
- would stand between the school board and the teachers when it came to matters of instruction.” 15
Instrumentality charter schools in Milwaukee stand in sharp contrast to Budde’s vision. By employing
MPS teachers, enjoying limited administrative flexibility and using the traditional curriculums, the power
of these schools to be hotbeds of creativity and innovation is severely limited. Such divergence
from traditional conceptions of charter schools has led them to be called “charters in name only” by
some in the charter-school community.
Therefore, given the national findings cited above, we hypothesize efficiency differences to exist
between instrumentality charter schools and other charter schools. Because instrumentality charters
function much like traditional public schools, it is likely that the increased efficiency found in existing
Bang for the Buck
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