Enrollment in public charter schools rose by nearly 400,000 students over the past five years, even as headcount in traditional school districts fell by 1.75 million, an advocacy group reported Tuesday.
The National Alliance for Public Charter Schools found in an analysis of public enrollment data that charter schools in the 46 states that allow them grew their student bodies by almost 12% between the 2019-20 and 2023-24 academic years. Over the same period, the tally at traditional public school districts dropped by nearly 4%.
The District of Columbia-based advocacy group reported that roughly 8,000 charter schools nationwide counted a little more than 3.7 million students in the spring, representing about 7% of all public schools.
Traditional K-12 school districts counted a bit over 43.2 million students, according to the alliance. It said the findings highlight the need for more public education options.
“We have to offer families an option they believe in, or they will leave public schools altogether,” said Debbie Veney, lead author of the report. “For an ever-increasing number of families, charter schools are the public schools that best meet their needs.”
Charter schools are independently managed public schools that operate under laws varying from state to state.
Montana became the latest state to authorize the model last year — leaving North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska and Vermont as the only states without charter school laws.
The report builds on earlier studies that showed private and charter school enrollment booming during pandemic lockdowns as more parents sought alternatives to traditional school districts that required virtual learning between 2020 and 2022.
Multiple studies have linked historic declines in math and reading scores to those lockdown policies, with data showing students in high-poverty and multicultural school districts suffered the most while supposedly learning from home.
The report published Tuesday noted “significant gains in Black and Hispanic student enrollment” at charter schools over the past five years, with Hispanic enrollment growing 18 times faster than in district schools. White enrollment in charter schools also grew modestly.
While falling birth rates have driven down the nation’s school-aged population, the report found that 84% of states had charter enrollment growth exceeding school-aged population growth.
“In contrast, district schools underperformed child population trends, particularly for White and Black students, indicating a growing preference for charter schools,” the alliance said.
The report found these trends outlasting the pandemic, as charter schools added 83,172 students during the 2023-24 term while district public schools lost 274,412
“Enrollment growth of more than 80,000 new students in just one year is a clear sign that families are not waiting for the system to catch up to their needs,” said Starlee Coleman, president and CEO of the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools. “They are actively seeking schools that meet their children’s needs today.”
The National Education Association and American Federation of Teachers, the nation’s two largest teachers unions, did not respond to requests for comment on the report.
Union officials have waged a decades-long campaign against the learning model since Minnesota opened the nation’s first charter school in 1992, often lobbying lawmakers to withhold public funds.
While unions represent most teachers in public school districts, they represent only about 1 in 10 charter school teachers.
Several outside experts reached for comment on Tuesday’s report said unions and public school districts could learn from charters.
They pointed to the established track record of charter schools in improving academic performance while spending less money on school administrators.
“District-run public schools need to step up their game to avoid losing even more students to public charter schools going forward,” said Patrick Wolf, an education reform professor at the University of Arkansas who studies charter schools.
Mr. Wolf pointed to research showing that 1.5 million parents pulled their children out of traditional public schools during the pandemic as they judged them “unresponsive to their needs.”
“Traditional public schools stayed closed longer than was necessary, given the science confirming that children posed a much lower risk of spreading COVID and a dramatically lower risk of dying from it compared to adults,” he said. “Zoom school was an educational disaster for children and exposed parents to curricular content and teaching styles that they found wanting.”
According to conservative parental rights advocates, the report confirms that pandemic virtual learning also drove some families toward private schooling and homeschooling by exposing left-leaning policies on hot-button political topics such as transgender identity.
“Virtual schooling pulled back the curtain to reveal rampant political ideologies in curriculum and school policies, which often take priority to merit and achievement,” said Alleigh Marré, executive director of the American Parents Coalition. “Until government schools recalibrate, the trend toward charter, private, and homeschool options will only continue to grow.”
Not all charter schools are thriving, however.
The report found that charter enrollment dropped in six states over the past five years, with declines ranging from half a percentage point in Connecticut to about 20% in Kansas.
According to a study that the conservative Thomas B. Fordham Institute released last month, roughly 500 charter and district public schools nationwide have chronic low performance and declining enrollment, making them candidates for closure.
“These trends show that parents continue to ’vote with their feet,’ moving their children to schools that meet their individual needs,” said Michael Petrilli, Fordham Institute’s president. “We have too few students for too many schools, but even more importantly, we have too few great schools for too many students.”
Longtime charter school advocate Nina Rees, a former Education Department official in the George W. Bush administration, said it’s fair to expect charter schools to compete for students since they rely on family preferences for enrollment.
“They are set up to meet the needs of families, and if they don’t, they will not be able to keep their doors open,” Ms. Rees said. “I should also add that this report offers lawmakers interested in expanding school choice another reason to double down on charter schools as the best form of public school choice.”
• Sean Salai can be reached at ssalai@washingtontimes.com.
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