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After years of frustration and spurious claims that it is destroying public education, the charter school movement is nearing a tipping point when it comes to equitably accessing the local resources from which it has too often been excluded.

To see why, consider the plight of Missouri lawmakers, whose most recent attempt at charter funding reform, , is the subject of a by my organization.

Since their inception in 1998, charters have seen their share of total enrollment increase to roughly 41% of public school students in St. Louis and 51% in Kansas City, while enrollment in traditional district schools in both cities has halved.

That growth hasn’t come at the expense of students, who make if they enroll in a charter school.

Yet, despite their strong track record and seismic shift in enrollment, the Show Me State’s charters have been systematically excluded from local revenues, the vast majority of which still flow through traditional school districts that have no legal obligation to share them.

Mathematically speaking, that means the same number of dollars have been divided between ever fewer district students. As of the 2024-25 school year, both Saint Louis Public Schools and Kansas City Public Schools now receive in local revenues per student, which is more than receive from all revenue sources combined.

In practice, this trend has left state policymakers who are reluctant to anger district-affiliated parents and educators with a difficult choice: allow the state’s ever-expanding roster of charters to operate at an ever-increasing competitive disadvantage or write ever-larger checks to charters in the name of funding equity.

Prior to HB 1552, their preference for the first of those options meant Missouri’s charters received about 30% less in total revenues per pupil than traditional public schools in the two districts. But things changed in 2022, when, to the surprise of many observers, the legislature decided it would try to close the district-charter gap with new state dollars.

The resulting funding shock, likely the largest in the history of the charter school movement, has so far increased revenues by roughly $4,000 per charter school student.

Yet, because districts’ local funding per pupil is increasing so quickly — and because of the complexity of the state’s funding formula — true equity remains elusive. Despite the unprecedented infusion of state funding, our shows that the St. Louis and Kansas City districts still receive about $5,500 more per pupil than charters there do.

It’s hard to imagine districts’ administrators in these locations objecting to this arrangement. But what about taxpayers, who are now on the hook for nearly $200 million per year in pursuit of the frustratingly elusive goal of funding equity? And what about kids in the rest of the state, where total funding per pupil is now almost $10,000 lower than in its two big urban areas?

Already, the cost of HB 1552 is , nearly triple the state’s initial projections. And if nothing is done, simple arithmetic suggests it will continue to rise as more students exit district schools for charters.

Allowing districts to keep local dollars may have been politically expedient in the charter school movement’s early years, but it is becoming untenable – and not just in Missouri.

Despite enrolling just 7.8% of America’s public school students overall, in a growing number of cities — places like San Antonio, Phoenix and Flint, Michigan — charter enrollment is approaching half of their districts’ public school population.

Consequently, the arithmetic of allowing the country’s biggest urban districts to monopolize local resources is becoming increasingly ridiculous — and increasingly unpalatable for political leaders hoping to appeal to a majority of parents and taxpayers.

To see where things are headed, consider the path taken by Indianapolis, where a political feedback loop has clearly taken hold. Around 2021, charter schools crossed the politically and psychologically important 50% mark. In 2023, state legislators passed a law requiring Indianapolis Public Schools to share its local revenues with charter schools in the district on an equitable basis. Then, this year, the state created the Indianapolis Public Education Corp.  to oversee the distribution of those revenues and promote better coordination in areas like facilities and transportation, where charters have also been excluded.

Already, these changes are intensifying the pressure to consolidate or repurpose underutilized schools in a community that has seen a precipitous decline in the number of K-12-aged children — from nearly 100,000 students to about 40,000 — which makes sense if you think staffing and maintaining mostly empty buildings is a poor use of resources.

Even in places without such fiscal and operational pressures, the political ground is shifting. Twenty years ago, the notion that public dollars could flow to a secular, nonprofit, privately operated school of choice was considered controversial — never mind that charters must adhere to the same content standards and testing requirements as traditional public schools and admit students regardless of race, gender or sexual orientation.

Yet today, with entire communities increasingly educating most of their children in charters — and with Republican states increasingly opting to expand vouchers, education savings accounts and other less regulated forms of school choice — claims that charters are destroying public education feel a bit behind the times.

Yes, it could be a mistake to embrace a choice-based education system in a country that has been fragmenting without one. Or it could be time for those who would defend America’s public education system to recognize charter schools for what they are: the most transparent, accountable and egalitarian form of school choice a local community can provide, and fund them accordingly.

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