Archived Information
The State of Charter Schools 2000 - Fourth-Year Report, January 2000
Grade Level Configuration
State charter laws give charter developers the freedom to choose the grade structure and age range of the students their schools will serve. A large number of charter schools have chosen to reduce the number of transitions from school to school by keeping their students at the same school for an extended period of time. At least twice as many charter schools as compared to all public schools served students in K-8, K-12, or ungraded grade spans. In addition, the vast majority of charter schools that reported "other" grade configurations served students in at least two of the traditional elementary, middle, and high school grade configurations.
In 1998-99, about one-half (52 percent) of all charter schools were structured according to a traditional grade-level configuration of elementary, middle, or high school as compared to more than three-fourths (78 percent) of all public schools in the 27 charter states (in 1997-98).
In comparison to other public schools, almost 3 times as many charter schools spanned kindergarten through 8th grade (16 percent), almost 4 times as many charter schools spanned kindergarten through 12th grade (8 percent), almost twice as many charter schools spanned the middle-high grades (10 percent), and over twice as many charter schools had "other" grade configurations (5 percent).
The highest percentage of both charter and other public schools were elementary schools--but nearly twice as many other public schools were elementary (47 percent) as compared to charter schools (25 percent).
The high school grade configuration was the only one with approximately equal percentages in both charter (17 percent) and other public schools (15 percent). Pre-existing public charter schools were more likely to be high schools (23 percent) than were either newly created (16 percent) or pre-existing private charter schools (10 percent). Charter schools that were pre-existing private or newly created were more likely to serve primary, K-8, K-12, and other grade levels than were pre-existing public schools.
Estimated Grade Level Distribution for Charter Schools and All Public Schools in the 27 Charter States1
NOTE: These data are based on responses from all 975 open charter schools that responded to the survey.
SOURCE: U.S Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, Common Core of Data Survey, 1997-98.
Estimated Grade Level Distribution for Charter Schools
Estimated Grade Level Distribution for Charter Schools and All Public Schools in the 27 Charter States
Percentage of students
1Grade levels are defined as follows: Primary includes only grades K-3; Elementary includes any of grades K-3 and at least one of grades 4-6; Middle includes any of grades 5-8 and no grades K-4 or 9-12; K-8 includes any of grades K-1, and any of grades 4-6 and any of grades 7-8 and no grades 9-12; Middle-high includes any of grades 6-8 and any of grades 9-12 and no grades K-5; High includes any of grades 9-12 and no grades K-8; K-12 includes any of grades K-3 and any of grades 4-6 and any of grades 7-8 and any of grades 9-12; Other includes all other grade breakdowns; Ungraded indicates that no grade levels are used at the school.
-###-
