Curious2

Charter School Philanthropy Revisited

In an earlier post, I reviewed some philanthropy statistics for New York City charter schools.  The information came from IRS filings (“Form 990”).  However,  annual charter school financial audits are better and more timely sources for this data.  The audits are available about six months earlier than the Form 990’s.  Also, the audits present the information in a clearer fashion.

Thanks in part to the New York Freedom of Information Law, I was able to get copies of almost all of the financial audits for the school year ending in 2008.  The key page in the audit is called the “Statement of Activities”.  Here is a PDF with these statements for the 58 charter schools in my sample.  Here is a workbook with my calculations for these schools.

Overall, the total amount of philanthropic contributions for the 58 schools was $25,511,490.  The total enrollment was 17,680.  This comes out to a per pupil calculation of $1,443 (as compared to $1,175 for my 990-based 2006-07 calculation).  The average school philanthropy per pupil was $1,654 (as compared to $1,366).  The median school was $1,081 (as compared to $697). 

Some of this difference represents growth from one year to the next.  Most, though, is attributable to differences in the reporting methodology.  In particular, the 990’s do not generally include in-kind donations and the audits do.  (I had assumed otherwise in the comment section of the prior post!)  Also, I made a change mentioned in the notes below that affect the median calculation.

I encourage charter school operators and other readers to help me to further improve these calculations.

Here are some additional notes:

1. I subtracted out Kipp To College costs because these amounts are not used for current students.  This is their alumni program.
2. I averaged across KIPP and Achievement First schools for per pupil philanthropy.  These schools route disproportionate amounts of their philanthropy through one school.  If I didn’t make this change, the total average would be the same, the average school would be 8% higher and the median school would be 29% lower.
3. The data is missing for Bronx Charter School for the Arts because I have a bad copy of the Statement of Activities.
4. I removed  The New York Center for Autism.
5. I included restricted funds.
6. I included in-kind donations.
7. I included fundraising but did not subtract out fundraising expenses.

FOIL Me

In order to learn more about charter school philanthropy and expenses, I needed to get copies of the annual financial audits that all charter schools are required to produce.  Charter schools send these audits to their authorizers.  For New York City schools, there are three authorizers: the NYC DOE, the State University of New York (SUNY), and the State Education Department (SED).

In this case, the NYC DOE has the good-government solution: all audits for DOE-authorized charter schools are available on the DOE website in PDF format.

SUNY and SED, on the other hand, do not have the audits available on their websites.  Luckily, the people I interacted with at the two organizations were professional and courteous.  They both gave the same advice: “You need to FOIL me.”  FOIL refers to New York State’s Freedom of Information Law.  As instructed, I sent an email requesting the documents, being careful to include the magic phrase “Freedom of Information Law”.  In both cases, after about a week and a half,  I received the documents.

SUNY gave me a link to a PDF file that I could temporarily access on their website.  SED, on the other hand, only has the audits in paper form, so they had to mail a copy to me.  Also, with SED, I had to pay 25 cents per page and they needed to receive a check before they could proceed.  I hope they use the funds towards the purchase of a scanner.

Two questions are raised by this experience:

1. Why don’t SUNY and SED simply put these files on their websites?

2. Why do SUNY and SED make people “FOIL them” for these documents?

For both institutions, it is policy to require FOIL requests for information that is not available on their website.  Apparently, it can be quite time-consuming to fulfill these requests, especially if the documents only exist in paper format.  The FOIL requirement can discourage some of these requests.  If people knew that a FOIL request is as simple as an email with the FOIL phrase included, they might not be discouraged.  One solution, of course, is for the organizations to put the files on their websites.  See question #1.

I will make all of these audits available online very soon.  My efforts, though, should not be necessary.

Crossing the Line?

Elizabeth Green’s story, “Teachers union sent scripted questions to City Council members”, may serve as a  wake-up call.  A friend called me and shouted “You’ve got to be kidding me!” about eight times.  He got the wake-up call. 

Others active in public education are surprised that people are surprised.  That should be a wake-up call too.  Perhaps this soft corruption exists in part because of a lack of public awareness.  Perhaps if we better educate people about “how things work” (as Green subtitles her story), we will get better political outcomes.

All special interest groups use money and pressure to influence the political process.  We hope that their methods don’t cross the line, but different people draw that line in very different places.  Instead of changing human nature, here are four mechanisms to change government that might decrease the effects of inappropriate interest group influence:

1. Increase government transparency.  We can’t oversee what we can’t see.

2. Simplify the role of government.  We can’t oversee what we can’t understand.

3. Reduce the role of government.  The greater the role of government, the greater incentive for inappropriate interest group influence.

4. Allow for private competition to serve as a check on government corruption.  When the government is a monopoly provider, there is no competitive check on the inefficiency caused by interest group influence.