The debate about the what are the most important elements in education has been going on since ancient times. For as long a period, educators have been gathering together and doing “something different” to teach the next generation of children.
In this case, charter schools have been here all along! Well, not quite. In the United States, charter schools as publicly-funded but privately run K-12 educational institutions have legally existed since 1991. Since then, the number of students enrolled in charter schools has grown to approximately 2 million students in 6,002 schools.
With significant funding limitations and a growing focus on performance-based results, now more than ever charter schools need to find the financial and curricular model that works.
We’ll look at one such model here. One charter school in New York City argues that hiring and retaining the best teachers is critical for success and offers their teachers $125,000 salaries with up to an additional $25,000 in bonuses. As stated on their website, The Equity Project (TEP) does not fundraise in order to maintain this level of teacher compensation—they have a sustainable model for operations, reallocating their per-pupil state-received funding. (The only area for which they fundraise is facilities and building costs, as TEP, like most charter schools, does not receive publicly-funded facilities grants). If one looks at their budget and expenses for 2011-2012, 59% of their expenses were on teacher salaries. If one adds curriculum and classroom expenses, field trips and special events to the mix, the percentage of TEP’s budget spent on “instruction” rises to 66.6 percent, which is on par with what conventional public schools spend on instruction.
Charter schools are usually only able to spend 30% to 50% of their budgets on instruction, as they do not have the same economies of scale as do conventional school districts. Clearly, TEP makes some sacrifices to support its financial model. The school is housed in trailers until they have enough funds to build a permanent building. There are relatively large class-sizes (about 30 students), and as they were described by WBEZ, they “skimp on everything except teacher salaries.” There is no right or wrong—if the kids learn, the teachers are happy, and the parents are confident, the school works. But given the age of technology in which we live, exposure to technology education is likely to help students in their studies and in the job market down the road.
TEP spends 1% of their budget on technology and software that is geared towards educational program delivery (as compared to general management). While they absolutely don’t need to buy every child a computer, there are some exciting and fun technologies out there that are low-cost and can also give some edge to a physics, science, or math class—to TEP and to the other 6,001 charter schools in the United States.
Think about Raspberry Pi, or Arduino, or Bare Paint. Now think about where you’re reading this post: Eduporium. We work with schools to make these and other exciting educational technologies available and affordable by streamlining the verification process for academic discounts. The program itself is free, and we give back a portion of our profit to participating schools.
Learn more here!