By John Mooney
Charter salaries tend to lag behind their district counterparts, but by how much?
There’s always plenty of debate about New Jersey charter schools: Are they better than district schools? How should they be funded? Who should approve and monitor them?
But one issue is not up for debate: These alternative public schools — at least most of them — struggle to pay their teachers on par with district schools. There are a number of factors at play. Charters have less public funding under state law, for one, and their teachers are typically less experienced, since the schools themselves are newer.
And at least one other consideration should be taken into account: Just nine of the state’s nearly 90 charters are union shops.
Nonetheless, a few of the schools have done better than others in trying to keep up with their district counterparts, the bulk of them being the state’s oldest and most-established charters.
The following are the top-paying charters in 2013-2014, according to the state’s annual staff-salary data, listed by the average salary of their full-time certified teachers.
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