Data from the 2022-23 school year further reveals differences in charter school enrollment demographics across locales (Table 3.2). In general, Black and Hispanic students are more likely to be enrolled in urban charter schools than charter schools in other locales, while White students are more likely to be enrolled in rural and town charter schools. Specifically, 52.1% of charter school students in rural communities and 53.3% of students in towns were White, while 72.5% of charter school students in urban areas were Black or Hispanic. Additionally, charter school students who are of other ethnicities (Native American, Pacific Islander, or Two or More Races) are more likely to attend charter schools in towns and rural areas. This may be linked to the presence of charter schools in rural indigenous communities. For more information on rural charter schools, see our detailed look at rural charter schools.

Table 3.2 also shows that, in the 2022-23 school year, 70% of charter school students in urban areas were eligible for free or reduced-price lunch (FRPL). By comparison, 45.6% of rural charter students received FRPL. Town and suburban charter schools had similar levels of FRPL students at approximately 57.6% and 53.1%, respectively.

CHARTER SCHOOL LANDSCAPE—GEOGRAPHIC SCHOOL DISTRICT

As we state in the Methodology section, the Common Core of Data (CCD) is one of the National Alliance’s primary data sources. In the CCD, many charter schools across the country are coded as their own independent school district since they operate autonomously from the local educational agency (LEA), also referred to as a “school district,” in their area. This can make district-level analysis difficult when trying to understand how a charter school impacts its local school district. For the purposes of including charter schools, the National Alliance proposed a new variable called “geographic school districts,” which is the geographic boundary of the school district in which a charter school is physically located. We identify the geographic school districts for all public schools by mapping the coordinates of schools onto the NCES school district shapefile using ArcGIS.

Since the first charter school opened in 1992, there has been steady growth in the number of LEAs with at least one charter school within their boundaries. In the 2022-23 school year, the number of LEAs with at least one charter school in their geographic district grew to 1,626 (see Table 3.3).