Archived Information
The State of Charter Schools 2000 - Fourth-Year Report, January 2000
The autonomy afforded by charter law allows charter schools not only to choose whether or not they provide certain services but also to choose the service provider. On average, an almost equal number of charter schools provided the services themselves through staff or volunteers, purchased services from the district, or acquired services from an outside provider. Newly created and pre-existing private schools differed from pre-existing public schools in the service providers used. Pre-existing public schools were more likely to use the district whereas newly created and pre-existing private schools were more likely to provide the service themselves or to rely on an outside provider. Fewer schools in 1998-99 than in previous years shared the responsibility of providing services with either the district or another provider.
- Averaging across all service areas in 1998-99, more than one-third of charter schools provided services themselves (36 percent), about one-third of charter schools used only an outside provider (34 percent), and slightly more than one-quarter of schools used the district as the sole service provider (26 percent). Newly created and pre-existing private schools were much more likely to provide services themselves or to secure services from an outside provider whereas pre-existing public schools were most likely to retain the district as the service provider.
- In 1998-99, nearly every charter school offered special education testing (97 percent) and special education services (95 percent). In addition, the majority of charter schools offered one or more noneducational services to their students--more than four-fifths of the schools had social and/or health services (82 percent each), nearly three-quarters had before and after school care (72 percent) and/or food services (71 percent), two-thirds offered transportation (66 percent), and over one-half had athletic programs (54 percent).
- Charter school staff most often provided such noneducational services as before- and after-school care (65 percent), athletic programs (63 percent), and special education services (39 percent). Charter schools most often acquired transportation (42 percent) and food programs (39 percent) from districts and purchased special education testing (36 percent) and social services (42 percent) from an outside provider. When charter schools provided health services, a nearly equal percentage of the services were provided by the school (35 percent), the district (29 percent), or an outside provider (33 percent).
- Charter schools most often provided such administrative services as purchasing (57 percent) and custodial (45 percent) services. Charter schools most often purchased payroll (46 percent), accounting (38 percent), insurance (53 percent), and legal services (54 percent) from an outside provider. The most frequent provider of building maintenance was split between an outside provider (39 percent) and the school (36 percent).
Average Percentage of Schools Selecting a Given Service Provider by Creation Status
NOTE: These data are based on responses from 974 of the 975 open charter schools that responded to the survey for most items. These questions were asked only in the first year of administration of the new school survey. The question about building maintenance was not asked in the first year of our survey, therefore, the data for that category is based on 756 out of 757 open charter schools. The questions about athletic programs, special education testing, and special education services were included only in the 1999 new survey upon the request of the U.S. Department of Education departmental reviewers, therefore, data for these questions rely on 369 open charter schools that responded in 1999 to the new survey. This exhibit represents unweighted averages across all service areas. Unweighted averages are used so as to not inflate the average for services that are more commonly provided. The numbers in each of the "Total" rows do not add to 100% across the columns because respondents were also offered "Both" as a response option.
Percentage of Charter Schools that Offer Services by Provider and Creation Status
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