Archived Information

B. Basic Characteristics of Charter Schools

Enrollment By State
School Size
Grade Level Configuration
Certificated Teachers
Computers for Instruction

Enrollment By State

• During the 1997-98 school year, our data show that charter school enrollment totaled 162,130 in 678 of the 717 open charter schools. This enrollment was 0.6 percent of the students in public schools (in 1996-97) in the 24 charter states that had operating charter schools.

• California had the most charter school students — 55,764 or 34 percent of all charter school students in the 24 charter states. California charter school enrollment represented one percent of the total public school enrollment in the state.

• Arizona, the state with the second highest number of charter school students, had an estimated 25,128 students enrolled in charter schools. This enrollment was more than three percent of the state's public school enrollment, which makes Arizona the state with the highest percentage of public school students enrolled in charter schools.

• Charter school enrollment in the remaining states (omitting Arizona) ranged from less than 0.1 percent to 1.6 percent of public school enrollment.

Estimated Enrollment In Charter Schools And All Public Schools In The 24 Charter States

Charter School Enrollment as a Percentage of Public School Enrollment by State

School Size

• Approximately 65 percent of all charter schools were small schools enrolling fewer than 200 students in 1997-98. About 36 percent enrolled fewer than 100 students. In contrast, about 17 percent of all public schools in the 24 charter states enrolled fewer than 200 students and only eight percent enrolled fewer than 100 students (in 1996-97). The median number of students in charter schools is 132 compared to 486 in all public schools.

• Only about 10 percent of charter schools enrolled more than 600 students, compared to more than one-third (36 percent) of all public schools.

• Newly created charter schools were most likely to be small: 74 percent of newly created charter schools enrolled fewer than 200 students, while 35 percent of charter schools that were pre-existing public schools enrolled fewer than 200 students. The median number of students is significantly higher for pre-existing public schools (385) than for either newly created (111) or pre-existing private (125).

• Only four percent of newly-created charter schools enrolled more than 600 students compared to 35 percent of charter schools that were pre-existing public schools, many of which were large secondary schools.

• The enrollment distribution of charter schools that were pre-existing private schools more closely resembles the enrollment distribution of newly created charter schools than pre-existing public schools.

Estimated School Size for Charter Schools And All Public Schools In The 24 Charter States

NOTE: The third column called "Charter schools" includes data for 678 charter schools and is based on two sources of data: (1) responses from 618 open charter schools that responded to the Study's telephone survey supplemented with enrollment information from state data sources and (2) the U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Educational Statistics, Common Core of Data Survey, 1996-97 Early Release Files. The percentages in columns four, five, and six for the different types of charter schools rely only on the first source of data, the responses from 618 charter schools. The distribution of school size for the 618 is almost the same as that for the 678 charter schools. For the 618 charter schools, the median number of students is 128. We report size for 618 of 619 survey respondents because one school did not report enrollment information and we were unable to obtain this information either from the school or from other sources at the time of this report.

SOURCE: U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, Common Core of Data (CCD) Survey, 1996­97, Early Release Files. We use the CCD data here rather than data from the Digest of Education Statistics because the enrollment distribution is based on school-by-school enrollment figures; the Digest provided only overall enrollment figures for each state.

Estimated Distribution of School Size for Charter Schools and All Public Schools

Estimated Distribution of School Size for Newly-Created and Pre-Existing Charter Schools

Grade Level Configuration

• About half (52 percent) of all charter schools in 1997-98 had the traditional grade-level configurations of elementary, middle, and high school, compared to 78 percent in all public schools in the 24 charter states (in 1996-97). ¹

• About 16 percent of charter schools spanned grades kindergarten through eight compared to about six percent of all public schools and about eight percent of charter schools spanned kindergarten through grade 12 compared to about two percent of all public schools.

• Nine percent of charter schools were exclusively primary schools, focused on early education in kindergarten through grade 3. This compares to about six percent of all public schools in the 24 charter states.

• One quarter of charter schools that were pre-existing public schools were high schools compared to 15 percent of all public schools. Charter schools that were pre-existing private schools were more likely to be primary, K-8, middle-high, and K-12 grade level schools than were either newly created or pre-existing public schools.

Estimated Grade Level Distribution for Charter Schools And All Public Schools In The 24 Charter States

Estimated Grade Level Distribution for Charter Schools

Grade Level Distribution for all Public Schools in the 24 Charter States

Certificated Teachers

• Legislation in 14 of the charter states requires teacher certification. In most of those states, the percentage of certificated teachers in charter schools was similar to the percentage in all public schools. Four states — Delaware, Louisiana, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania — were exceptions to this statement. Each of these states has at least 10 percent fewer certificated teachers in charter schools than in all public schools.

• Legislation in 10 of the charter states either does not require teacher certification or does not specify whether teacher certification is required. Charter schools in six of these states — Arizona, Florida, Illinois, Massachusetts, Texas, and the District of Columbia — hired at least 10 percent fewer certificated teachers than all public schools in these states.

Estimated Percentage of Certificated Staff in Charter Schools and All Public Schools in the 24 Charter States

NOTE: This exhibit is based on responses from 608 of the 619 open charter schools that responded to the telephone survey. Percentage of certificated staff is computed by dividing total number of certificated classroom and special education teachers by the total number of instructional staff including certificated classroom and special education teachers, non-certificated classroom and resource teachers, and other instructional staff, excluding aides and assistants.

SOURCE: U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, Schools and Staffing in the United States: A Statistical Profile, 1993-1994. Certificated instructional staff include teachers with advanced, regular, and alternative certification.

¹"Yes" means that the state law required the same level of certification as in other public schools; waiver provisions in effect for other public schools also apply to charter schools. (1) In Georgia and Colorado, certification requirements may be waived. (2) In Louisiana and Pennsylvania, at least 75 percent of the staff must be certified. (3) In North Carolina, 75 percent of grade K-5 teachers and 50 percent of grade 6-12 teachers must be certificated. (4) In South Carolina, in new schools at least 75 percent must be certified while in pre-existing schools, at least 90 percent must be certified. (5) In Wisconsin, certification is not required if certified staff are not available.

Estimated Percentage of Certified Staff in Charter Schools and All Public Schools in the 24 Charter States

Computers for Instruction

• The estimated average student to computer ratio in charter schools is 9.8 which is slightly less than the estimated 10.0 average for all public schools in 1996-97¹.

• About two-thirds of our sample of charter schools had a student to computer ratio of fewer than 10 students per computer. The estimated median student to computer ratio is 6.0 to 1 across this sample of charter schools.

• About six of ten charter schools have computers available for instruction in more than three quarters of their classrooms. However, 15 percent of charter schools have classrooms with no computers available for instruction.

• Regardless of the number of computers in charter schools, 60 percent of charter schools have a large percentage (more than three-quarters) of computers capable of running advanced or multimedia applications.

Estimated Student To Computer Ratio for A Selected Sample of Charter Schools

Estimated Percentage of Charter Schools Using Computers In Their Classrooms And Percentage of Computers Capable of Running Multimedia Applications

NOTE: These data are drawn from questions asked only in the 1997 new schools survey and the 1997 or 1998 follow-up surveys; resulting in responses from 365 schools. Out of these 365 schools, 355 reported information on number of computers. Columns two and three in the second table are based on responses from 354 of the 355 >possible schools, one schools did not provide information about percent of classrooms using computers. Columns four and five in the second table are based on responses from 332 of the 335 possible schools; 19 schools reported that they had no computers available for instruction and thus the student to computer ratio could not be computed for these schools. Four additional schools did not report information on multimedia computers.

¹Computers and Classrooms: The Status of Technology in U.S. High Schools. May, 1997. Princeton, NJ: Educational Testing Service, Policy Information Center. This average represents all 50 states.

² The distribution of schools with multimedia or advanced capacity is similar across charter schools without regard to the numbers of computers at the school with the exception that schools with 10 or fewer computers are slightly less likely to have multimedia capacity than schools with more than 10 computers.

Estimated Percentage of Classrooms In Charter Schools with Computers Used for Instruction

Estimated Percentage of Classrooms In Charter Schools With Computers Used for Instruction

[A. States and Charter Schools]

[C. Students of Charter Schools]