Dr. Will Flanders and CJ Szafir at the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty (WILL) co-authored a new report, “Bang for the Buck,” that analyzes which public schools in Milwaukee produce the best outcomes per tax dollars spent. By using an econometric model that controls for factors such as socioeconomic status, the study concludes that independent and non-instrumentality charters are more “efficient” than traditional MPS schools and instrumentality charters.
To date, no study has attempted to examine the differences in “efficiency” between different types of charters and traditional public schools. This study compares socioeconomic status with the dollar amount received per student, and standardized test scores such as the Badger exam and the WKCE. The executive summary and full report can be found here.
Dr. Will Flanders and CJ Szafir share, “In this report, we have shown that independent charter schools are far more efficient in their expenditures than public schools. Similar levels of increased efficiency are found in non-instrumentality charter schools. This is not a call to convert public schools to independent charters, but a call for the examination of the comparative inefficiencies of traditional public schools and public charter instrumentality schools”