Traditional public schools versus charter schools: a comparison of technical efficiency

This paper addresses the now famous question of “Does Money Matter?” in public education. While the general consensus is that additional expenditures may improve educational outcomes, this is by no means a guarantee. Indeed, some studies indicate that a school's resources are not an important determinant of student performance. As Adkins and Moomaw (2003) suggest, the true relationship between resources and performance may become more apparent in a better specified model accounting for technical inefficiency. Along these lines, we attempt to measure the technical efficiency gains of charter schools over traditional public schools using a stochastic frontier production model.