The relative efficiency of charter schools: A cost frontier approach

Charters represent an expansion of public school choice, offering free, publicly funded educational alternatives to traditional public schools. One relatively unexplored research question concerning charter schools asks whether charter schools are more efficient suppliers of educational services than are traditional public schools. The potential relative efficiency advantage of charters vis-a-vis traditional publics is one of the mechanisms that supports the hypotheses that charters could improve performance for their students while using the same or fewer resources, and that the systemic effect of charters could lead to improved outcomes for traditional public students without requiring an increase in education sector resources.