An Analysis of Michigan Charter Schools: Enrollment, Revenues, and Expenditures

Though charter schools are a relatively new phenomenon in American education, they have been in existence long enough now to allow for evaluation of operational outcomes relative to traditional public schools. Using a comprehensive data set for the State of Michigan that spans the years 1995 through 2006, this article aims to provide such an evaluation in several dimensions. Specifically, we address four questions with our dataset: (1) To what degree do charter schools compete with local public schools? (2) Are charter schools underfunded relative to public schools? (3) What is the effect on state education finances of operating a system of charter schools? (4) Judging from expenditure from revenue patterns, do charter schools behave more as profit maximizing entities than do public schools4?