WI: Charter School Bonus Pay

Some folks in Wisconsin have figured out a way to give charter schools extra extra funding. Assembly Bill 818 creates a whole new kind of charter school (a wealthy kind).

Currently (as explained in the bill analysis), the Office of Educational Opportunity in the University of Wisconsin System can authorize charter schools. The law sets a per-student amount that the charter school is paid; for 2025-26, that amount is $12,369. That's the amount for a regular old charter school, what Wisconsin calls an "independent charter school."

The bill proposes that the director of OED could designate a charter school a "demonstration public school operator," and that any such school would be paid an additional $6,863 per pupil-- over 50% more than an ordinary charter school. (Both amounts would be adjusted annually).

The bill explains what a charter would have to do to score this extra-renumerative designation:

[T]o be designated as an demonstration public school operator, an independent charter school operator must demonstrate to the OEO director that it meets specific criteria, including that for each of its charter schools authorized by the OEO, the operator participates in a longitudinal study; provides professional development opportunities; disseminates best practices from its educational model to other schools; and establishes and maintains partnerships with community organizations.

In short, the charter school must do all the things that charter boosters always said they were going to do. Study and share what works? We were told repeatedly that charter schools would be pedagogical laboratories, where cool new educational miracles would be nurtured and then turned loose. Professional development? You mean there are charter schools that don't tell their staff anything at all about how to do the job? Maintain partnerships with community organizations?  Weren't charters going to lift up poor communities? 

Heck, the Education Freedom Foundation (Erika Donalds' new name for her Optima Foundation charter business) says of Wisconsin charter schools that charters "can exist as living laboratories" and furthermore, "Wisconsin also wants each charter school to meet the unique needs and interests of its community, parents, and students."

It certainly looks as if every single charter school could qualify for this tasty new windfall with just a little tweaking of paperwork. For an extra 50% funding boost, I'll bet most charter school operators would be willing to put on funny hats and call themselves a clown school, and this seems much easier than that.

But hey-- that longitudinal study is a great idea, because I'd bet you that one likely result is the discovery that boosting a school's funding to 150% of its previous level is a big help. I will go out on a limb and predict that "increased funding helps" will not be one of the "best practices" that demonstration charters share with public schools.