Blowing smoke on charter schools

Hood lays it on thick when promoting school choice:

As a longtime proponent of the cause, I think that more than doubling the share of students attending schools of choice in the next few years would have a huge and positive effect, not just on those students but on North Carolina education as a whole.

And it would draw new resources into education – human resources, mostly, those of involved parents and innovative educators and entrepreneurial philanthropists – while reducing the cost to taxpayers by hundreds of millions of dollars a year.

That last sentence is a doozy. Or I should say a "whopper". Why don't we see what Pennsylvania's Auditor General has to say about that cost reduction:

Auditor General Jack Wagner today called for a statewide moratorium on the creation of new charter and cyber charter schools until the General Assembly and the Rendell Administration fix a flawed funding system that bears no connection to the actual cost of educating children and is costing taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars a year in additional questionable spending.

In a special report issued today, Wagner said the funding problem was accelerating at an unaffordable rate. As more Pennsylvania children enroll in these alternative public schools, the more it costs taxpayers in additional millions of dollars each year. Taxpayers now spend about $1 billion a year on the approximately 73,000 children enrolled in Pennsylvania charter and cyber charter schools.

I don't know where John got his fantasy savings estimate, but everything I've seen shows charters costing more per pupil than traditional public schools. And if you want to talk about what happens to taxpayers' money that doesn't get spent directly on students, how about this:

Wagner’s special report found that taxpayers spent $936 million on 116 charter and 11 cyber charter schools with enrollment of 73,054 students during the 2008-09 school year. Wagner’s auditors found that, during the 2008-09 school year, the charter and cyber charter schools reported $108 million in excess profits, euphemistically called “reserve funds.”

Of course, our free market enthusiasts would probably admire a school formula that's profitable. But I'd sure like to see John Hood stand up in front of a bunch of taxpayers and explain why making millions in profit off of them is a good thing.