In January, Bellwether Education Partners released a new report that provided a rigorous, fact base on the weaknesses and strengths of the charter sector. In a new op-ed for The 74, I write about how disparities in funding between charter schools and traditional public schools hurt underserved students:

Twenty-seven years into the national charter school experiment, funding of charter schools and traditional public schools remains wildly unequal. In fact, charter school students receive 27 percent less in per-pupil funding than their traditional public school counterparts, leaving a total funding gap of nearly $13 billion.
The sheer magnitude of this gap should alarm anyone who cares about equity, but it matters even more because most charters serve a higher proportion of students of color and low-income students than traditional public schools and show positive effects on the performance of these groups. When charters are underfunded, it is the students most in need of a quality education whose educational opportunities are limited.

Charter schools are often critiqued for draining resources away from traditional public schools, but these data suggest that charter schools are doing more with less for students that are most in need of a high-quality education. Without action from state and local policy makers, charter schools will remained underfunded and charter school students will pay the cost. Read my full op-ed here.