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A National Study of Charter Schools - July 1998

III. Characteristics of Charter Schools

Each state's charter law creates an "opportunity space" for those who would like to become charter founders. Some states offer more circumscribed opportunities than others, as discussed in Chapter II. For example, four states allow only pre-existing public schools to convert to charter status, whereas five states plus the District of Columbia permit charter schools to be newly created or to convert from pre-existing public or private schools. Within their state context, charter school founders decide on such elements as the number of students they intend to enroll and the grade levels that their school will cover. This chapter describes characteristics of charter schools that have resulted from state law and local decisions of charter school founders.

CHAPTER HIGHLIGHTS

  • Charter schools enroll about 0.5 percent of public school students in the charter states.

  • Most charter schools are small, particularly compared to other public schools. Charter schools have an estimated median enrollment of about 150 students, whereas other public schools in the charter states have a median of about 500 students. More than 60 percent of charter schools enroll fewer than 200 students, whereas about 16 percent of other public schools have fewer than 200 students. Charter schools begun in the 1995-96 and 1996-97 school years have a higher proportion of small schools, those fewer than 100 students than schools opened in earlier years.

  • Many charter schools have nontraditional grade configurations. Charter schools include a higher proportion of K-12, K-8, and ungraded schools than other public schools.

  • Most charter schools are newly created schools. An estimated 62 percent of charter schools were created because of the charter opportunity; the remainder are pre-existing public schools (25 percent) or pre-existing private schools (13 percent) that have converted to charter status.

  • Newly created charter schools tend to be smaller than converted schools. The median school size for newly created schools is 116 students, compared to a median of more than 380 students for pre-existing public schools.

A. A Methodological Note

The Study gathered the data reported in this chapter using a telephone survey of all charter schools that were operating as of January 1, 1997. At that time, charter schools were operational in 16 states plus the District of Columbia. The only charter school open in Illinois at the time of the 1996-97 survey did not respond to our telephone calls. As a result, our analyses draw on data from schools in 15 states plus the District of Columbia. We have been careful to differentiate states from the District of Columbia up to this point. For ease of data presentation in the remainder of the Report, we refer to this group as the "16 charter states."[1]

We completed surveys for 381 schools or 89 percent of the 428 schools that were operational as of January 1, 1997. These schools represent a sample of the universe of charter schools, and consequently the statistics reported here are an estimate. Although the number of schools and students estimated in this Report are somewhat lower than the actual totals of all charter schools, the percentages used throughout are reasonably accurate and the best estimates possible at this time.[2] (See Appendix C for a discussion of survey response patterns.) This chapter describes characteristics of the group of charter schools in operation as of January 1997.

We will describe such charter school characteristics as school size, the number of newly created versus pre-existing charter schools (including the number of charter schools that were formerly public or private schools), and the range of grade-level configurations of charter schools. We will also explore whether and how charter schools that became operational more recently differ from charter schools that began earlier.

To place charter school characteristics into their context, we present data that compare charters to other public schools in the 16 charter states. We have chosen to use two complementary data presentations: (1) a general comparison across states, in which the average for all charter schools across the 16 states is compared to the average for all public schools across the 16 states weighted in one of several ways depending on the nature of the data,[3] and (2) a state-by-state comparison of proportions or averages of all charter schools with similar proportions or averages of all public schools, in each respective state.[4]

B. Enrollment by State

During the 1996-97 school year, we estimate charter school total enrollment to be 110,122 students[5]--approximately 0.5 percent of all students in the 17 charter states. Although California charter schools enroll the largest number of students--50,275 or 46 percent of all charter school students--California charter school enrollment represents slightly less than one percent of the state's public school population (see Exhibit 3-1). On the other hand, Arizona's estimated 16,907 charter school students make up more than two percent of that state's public school enrollment. Charter school enrollment in the remaining states ranges from less than .1 percent of the state's enrollment in Florida, Illinois, and Louisiana to an estimated one and three-tenths percent in New Mexico.

EXHIBIT 3-1

ESTIMATED ENROLLMENT BY STATE: CHARTER SCHOOLS (1996-97) AND
ALL PUBLIC SCHOOLS (FALL 1996) IN THE SEVENTEEN[1] CHARTER STATES

 

Charter school enrollment, 1996-97[2]

All public school enrollment, Fall 1996[3]

% of public school students in charter schools

California

50,275

5,535,312

0.9%

Arizona

16,907

  749,759

2.3%

Michigan

10,298

1,662,100

0.6%

Georgia

 8,249

1,321,239

0.6%

Colorado

 6,709

 673,438

1.0%

Massachusetts

 5,360

  936,794

0.6%

New Mexico

 4,461

  330,552

1.3%

Texas

 2,534

3,809,186

0.1%

Minnesota

 2,142

  836,700

0.3%

Wisconsin

 1,053

  884,738

0.1%

Hawaii

   832

  188,485

0.4%

Florida

   446

2,240,283

0.0%

Delaware

   290

  110,549

0.3%

Louisiana

   281

  777,570

0.0%

District of Columbia

   174

  79,159

0.2%

Alaska

    91

  126,015

0.1%

Illinois

    20

1,961,299

0.0%

Total

110,122   

22,223,178 

0.5%

1 In this exhibit, we include students from the one charter school in Illinois for which we were able to obtain estimated enrollment information. In later exhibits, Illinois is not included because the one charter school did not respond to our surveys. Later exhibits therefore refer to 16 charter states.

2 The data for this figure represent estimates using the telephone sample of 381 charter schools plus data gathered from other sources. Our telephone survey has a response rate of 89 percent, which is a high enough rate that most analyses reported in this document are reasonably accurate. However, for the purpose of estimated total charter school enrollment, we supplemented our 1996-97 telephone survey data with information from other sources. We drew on state sources in Colorado, California, and Massachusetts to include 1996-97 enrollment data for all missing schools in those states. For Michigan, Texas, Wisconsin, New Mexico, Georgia, Illinois and one school in Arizona, we were able to obtain some missing data from the 1996-97 Common Core of Data. The number of charter schools represented by these data is 406, which is 95 percent of the total number of operational charter schools in 17 charter states. (We were unable to obtain estimated enrollment figures for 22 charter schools.)

3 For this figure we were able to obtain estimated enrollment information from the 1997 Digest of Education Statistics, U.S. Department of Education, Office of Educational Research and Improvement. In general, this report relies on more extensive data from all operational public schools in the 16 charter states (N=33,706) which report student enrollment information to the National Center for Education Statistics, 1994-95 Common Core of Data Survey.

C. School Size

Echoing last year's findings, our survey results show that charter schools remain, on average, considerably smaller than other public schools in the states with charter schools. Exhibit 3-2 compares enrollment for charter schools with all public schools in the 16 states with operational charter schools.

EXHIBIT 3-2

ESTIMATED ENROLLMENT IN CHARTER SCHOOLS (1996-97)[1] AND
ALL PUBLIC SCHOOLS IN THE SEVENTEEN CHARTER STATES (1994-95)[2]

1 This figure relies on data from the telephone sample of 381 charter schools plus data gathered from other sources as described in an earlier footnote. The total number of charter schools represented by these data is 406 schools. Later exhibits refer to a median size of 143, which includes only those 381 charter schools in our sample. This median size includes estimated enrollment figures from additional sources.

2 Source: U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, Common Core of Data Survey, 1994-95. 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.

We estimate that more than 60 percent of all charter schools are small schools that enroll fewer than 200 students with almost 35 percent enrolling fewer than 100 students; in contrast, only 16 percent of all public schools in states with charter schools enroll fewer than 200 students and about nine percent enroll fewer than 100 students.[6] At the other end of the size continuum, 14 percent of the charter schools have more than 600 students, and about 4 percent have more than 1,000 students. In contrast, 38 percent of all public schools in the 16 charter states enroll more than 600 students and 12 percent enroll more than 1,000 students. Overall the estimated median enrollment is 149[7] students for charter schools and 505 students for all public schools in these states.

A closer examination of the data suggests an additional finding.[8] We divided the charter schools in our sample into three groups on the basis of the year in which the school opened: those that opened during the 1994-95 school year or earlier; those that opened during the 1995-96 school year; and those that opened during the 1996-97 school year. The data, shown in Exhibit 3-3a, reveal that recently opened schools are usually smaller than schools opening earlier. About 73 percent of the schools that opened during the 1996-97 school year enroll fewer than 200 students, compared to 62 percent of the schools that opened in the 1995-96 school year and 51 percent of the schools that opened in the 1994-95 school year. As Exhibit 3-3b illustrates, the estimated median school size ranges from 180 students for schools opening during the 1994-95 school year or earlier to 111 students for schools opened in 1996-97.

In other words, the data show that this most recent group of charter schools--schools started in the year with the largest single-year increase in the number of charter schools--are, on average, smaller than schools started earlier. In the remainder of this chapter, we will relate size to other characteristics of charter schools.

EXHIBIT 3-3A

ESTIMATED DISTRIBUTION OF ENROLLMENT IN CHARTER SCHOOLS BY YEAR OF SCHOOL OPENING (1996-97)[1]

1 We used the traditional public school calendar of the school year running from July through June, so schools considered to be open in the 1995-1996 school year are those that opened between July 1995 and June 1996. This figure relies on data from 380 charter schools. One charter school was excluded from this analysis because of missing enrollment information. This chart and all subsequent analysis uses charter school data only from the telephone survey. The numbers of charter schools over time used in this and the next exhibit are 98 for the 1994-95 school year or earlier; 137 for 1995-96; and 145 for 1996-97. These numbers differ by one school from numbers shown later because of the missing enrollment data.

EXHIBIT 3-3B

ESTIMATED MEDIAN ENROLLMENT OF CHARTER SCHOOLS BY YEAR OF SCHOOL OPENING

Year of school opening

Median enrollment

# Charter schools

1994-95 or earlier

180

 98

1995-96

148

138

1996-97

111

145

All charter schools

143

381

D. Grade Levels

Charter schools are much more likely to span grade levels different from those in other public schools in the charter states. Only about half (51 percent) of all charter schools fit the traditional grade-level configurations of elementary, middle, or high school, compared to 78 percent of all public schools in the 16 charter states (see Exhibit 3-4).

Exhibit 3-4 shows that charter schools are more likely to span grades kindergarten through eight--we estimate that nearly 17 percent of charter schools span these grades, compared to about four percent of all public schools in the 16 charter states. Charter schools are also more likely than all public schools in charter states to span all of the grades from kindergarten through 12 (an estimated 11 percent of charter schools compared to three percent of all public schools in the 16 charter states). Slightly more than a quarter (an estimated 26 percent) of charter schools are elementary schools, compared with almost half (49 percent) of all public schools in the 16 charter states. This finding is similar to the conclusion reached in last year's Report. However, schools that opened later are somewhat more likely to reflect traditional middle- and high-school grade-level configurations, whereas schools opening during or before the 1994-95 school year are somewhat more likely to serve students in grades K-8, middle-high, and K-12 (see Exhibit C-2 in Appendix C).

EXHIBIT 3-4

ESTIMATED GRADE LEVEL DISTRIBUTION AND MEDIAN ENROLLMENT FOR CHARTER SCHOOLS (1996-97)[1] AND ALL PUBLIC SCHOOLS IN THE SIXTEEN CHARTER STATES[2] (1994-95)

 

Grade level distribution

Median enrollment

Grade levels[3]

% of charter schools

% of all public schools

Charter schools

All public schools

Primary

 6.3%

 5.5%

 60

337

Elementary

26.0%

48.9%

169

513

Middle

 8.9%

14.3%

114

666

K-8

16.8%

 4.3%

150

368

Middle-high

10.0%

 6.0%

143

302

High

16.0%

15.1%

110

678

K-12

10.5%

 3.0%

220

188

Other

 3.4%

 2.1%

165

357

Ungraded

 2.1%

 0.7%

 98

 72

Total # or median across all configurations

n = 380

n = 33,706

median = 143

median = 505

1 This figure relies on data from 380 charter schools. One charter school was excluded from this analysis because of missing enrollment information.

2 Source: U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, Common Core of Data Survey, 1994-95.

3 Grade levels are defined as follows: Primary includes only grades K-3; Elementary includes any of grades K-3 and any 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-level breakdowns; Ungraded indicates no grade levels used at the school.

Exhibit 3-4 also shows the relationship between grade-level configuration and median student enrollment for charter schools and all public schools. At every grade level configuration except K-12 and ungraded, the median enrollment of charter schools is smaller than the median size of all public schools in the 16 charter states. The size difference is most striking at the traditional grade-level configurations. The median elementary charter school enrolls 169 students compared to the median of all public elementary schools with 513 students.

As shown in Exhibit C-3 in Appendix C, eight percent of charter high schools enroll more than 600 students, in contrast to 53 percent of all public high schools in the 16 charter states. Similarly, while more than 75 percent of the charter middle schools enroll fewer than 200 students, only about nine percent of all public middle schools in the sixteen charter states enroll fewer than 200 students. In our fieldwork, we found that many of the newly created charter high schools either were specialty high schools (focused on the arts, technology, school-to-work programs, etc.) or were designed to serve a particular population of students (e.g., dropouts, adjudicated students). The specialization in focus or population sets these schools apart from the typical large comprehensive public high school.
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[II. State Approaches to the Charter Concept (part 3 of 3)] [Table of Contents] [III. Characteristics of Charter Schools (part 2 of 2)]