Note: Since DC is included in the dataset from the NCES, an outlier, but not a state, I set the max for the interpolation to 20.5% (Arizona). This will hopefully start fewer fights than if I had maxed the scale at 45.3%, but I guess we’ll see!
Additional note: the typo in the headline was definitely intentional. Definitely not poor proofreading. Definitely.
In the 2022-23 school year (the freshest data available from the NCES), 3.7 million students (roughly 7.6% of public school students) attended charter schools. That’s up from 4.6% a decade prior.
The most charter school students were in California (645,732), Texas (468,935), and Florida (382,367). You might notice that these are also the three states with the highest populations… so this map is focused on the percentage of charter school students by state to avoid r/peopleliveincities. Raw counts are [here](https://usafacts.org/articles/which-states-have-the-most-students-enrolled-in-charter-schools/) if you’re curious about that.
Washington, DC, (famously not a state) has the highest share of charter school students (45.3%) in this data. Among states, Arizona had the second highest share at 20.5%.
Five states—Montana, Nebraska, both Dakotas, and Vermont—didn’t have charter school legislation. Kentucky had passed legislation but didn’t have any charter schools in the 22-23 school year.
Note: the typo in the headline was definitely intentional. Definitely not poor proofreading. Definitely.
DC because the kids of government officials, lobbyists, and other wealthy people, right?
AZ is a mecca of charter schools, with the influential STEM focused BASIS charter network having started in Tucson, AZ.
I attended the first BASIS school in Tucson for high school and received an excellent education. The student body was largely comprised of the ambitious children of immigrants—mostly students of Asian descent (Chinese, Indian, Vietnamese), a few Hispanic students, and an assortment of students from white immigrant families (Russian, Polish, etc.). My graduating class had around 40 people, and all of us were accepted into our colleges of choice, whether that meant an Ivy League university or a full-ride scholarship to a state school like the University of Arizona. I chose the state school route and did not pay a cent for my undergraduate education. In fact, my merit scholarship exceeded the cost of tuition, so I received a refund of at least $1000 each semester. This was the case for literally all of my friends that stayed in state (roughly half). Now we are all debt free with good STEM degrees entering medical school, law school, etc.
Lowest share is in the wrong order. Also, Kentucky should be at the top.
The Arizona stat is so gross. The public schools in AZ are already grossly underfunded. The charter schools just exacerbate that problem by siphoning enrollment.
Public schools made America great and conservatives are doing their best to destroy it. Thanks for your attention to this matter.
In florida is costs nothing to go to a charter school
One of the best ones in our area is in one of the poorest sections. So why would any parent send their kid to a c school when 1.4 miles away is an A school that costs the same… nothing?
Public education is so messed up in the USA.
The fact that charter schools exist, shows how badly funding is prioritized.
Every school should get the same amount of funding no matter where it is located. Poor neighborhoods, rural neighborhoods, wealthy suburbs…
People moving to different locations to be a “good school district” is insane.
How about making all of the schools equally decent?
It will be interesting to see the latest stats for Utah. Utah has a lot of charter schools and now has a “voucher” system where public money is going to private schools and home schools. Over $700,000 last year went to parents who spent the money on vacations and skiing.
I’m surprised it’s as low a percentage in Oregon.
Everyone we knew avoided public schools here.
Maybe it’s the fact that religious schools (Catholic) aren’t considered a charter?
at first I was surprised at CT being so low but we have a higher private school and magnet school % than national averages so thats likely why. Still lower than I expected.
I am not advocating for charter at all BTW. I like the magnet set up instead. Give choice around specialization without giving the specific school too much control over gen ed curriculum
It’s interesting the plains Republican states are the ones that don’t have charter schools
Its a plague. I say this having attended a magnet charter school and enjoyed it. The school I went to was designed to attract the brightest students in the state and beyond and teach them more advanced topics at a deeper level and more accelerated rate than you would ever see in a traditional school. As a senior I was learning linear algebra and differential equations at a considerably more in depth level than the college classes I later took in the same subjects at a relatively prestigious university. The concept was wonderful. The downfall of the school is that because it was a charter school, it was publicly funded but not publicly run. Because it was not publicly run, there was no recourse for parents or students to combat maleficence or negligence committed by staff except for petitioning the board of directors. So my senior year, when the woman who was both guidance counselor anistrator had parents trying to get her fired because she wasn’t doing her guidance counselor job at all, and was being negligent with behavioral issues, with multiple students going to the hospital and several leaving the school, they had nothing they could do because the woman in question was also the most powerful member of the board of directors. She had the jobs because she hired herself, and when parents wanted her fired, she just wrote their kids bad recommendation and tanked their college apps.
And that was a school with an actual positive mission that people believed in. Now all around the country you have tons of school’s whose only mission is “lets keep our kids away from brown people,” or “we have to protect our kids from evil science,” or “lets scam as much money from the government as possible,” and it gets real fucked up, real fast.
The real waste and fraud is AZ charter schools. Wasting my tax dollars on this bullshit
It would be interesting to see these rates juxtaposed with public school teacher pay rates.
AZ gets $13,100 per student average. They have an average class size of 22.7 students, so about $297,000 going into each classrom. This is some of the lowest in the nation. The average teacher gets paid 60k in AZ. Where is the rest going? Maintenece of buildings? Principles and office staff? Beurocracy?
Washington surprises me, considering there’s a good amount of wealth there
Interesting that there doesn’t appear to be any relation to partisian lean. Top 10 has 3 blue states + DC, 3 red states, and 3 purple states.
I think people are confusing Charter with Private. Charters are a public school. The money they receive follows the students that are enrolled. It isn’t stealing anything. Some communities need options, some don’t. Some are run well and some aren’t. Same standards apply to Charter schools as do Public schools. Private schools are different and a push to privatize all education would have a massive negative impact on high need communities. We’ll run Charters in districts that need options are not the problem
Both my younger sisters did running start and loved it and got much better grades than at traditional high school.
And I agree with your broader point!
Charter schools are a scam.
Charter schools are just a way for racist to deny education to marginalized communities, education should be public and not privatized, not everything needs to have e a profit margin
![Charter school enrollment (percentage of students) by state [OC]](https://www.europesays.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/6f1jx423mlkf1-1920x1024.png)
24 comments
Source: [National Center for Education Statistics](https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d23/tables/dt23_216.90.asp)
Tools: Datawrapper, Illustrator
Note: Since DC is included in the dataset from the NCES, an outlier, but not a state, I set the max for the interpolation to 20.5% (Arizona). This will hopefully start fewer fights than if I had maxed the scale at 45.3%, but I guess we’ll see!
Additional note: the typo in the headline was definitely intentional. Definitely not poor proofreading. Definitely.
In the 2022-23 school year (the freshest data available from the NCES), 3.7 million students (roughly 7.6% of public school students) attended charter schools. That’s up from 4.6% a decade prior.
The most charter school students were in California (645,732), Texas (468,935), and Florida (382,367). You might notice that these are also the three states with the highest populations… so this map is focused on the percentage of charter school students by state to avoid r/peopleliveincities. Raw counts are [here](https://usafacts.org/articles/which-states-have-the-most-students-enrolled-in-charter-schools/) if you’re curious about that.
Washington, DC, (famously not a state) has the highest share of charter school students (45.3%) in this data. Among states, Arizona had the second highest share at 20.5%.
Five states—Montana, Nebraska, both Dakotas, and Vermont—didn’t have charter school legislation. Kentucky had passed legislation but didn’t have any charter schools in the 22-23 school year.
Note: the typo in the headline was definitely intentional. Definitely not poor proofreading. Definitely.
DC because the kids of government officials, lobbyists, and other wealthy people, right?
AZ is a mecca of charter schools, with the influential STEM focused BASIS charter network having started in Tucson, AZ.
I attended the first BASIS school in Tucson for high school and received an excellent education. The student body was largely comprised of the ambitious children of immigrants—mostly students of Asian descent (Chinese, Indian, Vietnamese), a few Hispanic students, and an assortment of students from white immigrant families (Russian, Polish, etc.). My graduating class had around 40 people, and all of us were accepted into our colleges of choice, whether that meant an Ivy League university or a full-ride scholarship to a state school like the University of Arizona. I chose the state school route and did not pay a cent for my undergraduate education. In fact, my merit scholarship exceeded the cost of tuition, so I received a refund of at least $1000 each semester. This was the case for literally all of my friends that stayed in state (roughly half). Now we are all debt free with good STEM degrees entering medical school, law school, etc.
Lowest share is in the wrong order. Also, Kentucky should be at the top.
The Arizona stat is so gross. The public schools in AZ are already grossly underfunded. The charter schools just exacerbate that problem by siphoning enrollment.
Public schools made America great and conservatives are doing their best to destroy it. Thanks for your attention to this matter.
In florida is costs nothing to go to a charter school
One of the best ones in our area is in one of the poorest sections. So why would any parent send their kid to a c school when 1.4 miles away is an A school that costs the same… nothing?
Public education is so messed up in the USA.
The fact that charter schools exist, shows how badly funding is prioritized.
Every school should get the same amount of funding no matter where it is located. Poor neighborhoods, rural neighborhoods, wealthy suburbs…
People moving to different locations to be a “good school district” is insane.
How about making all of the schools equally decent?
It will be interesting to see the latest stats for Utah. Utah has a lot of charter schools and now has a “voucher” system where public money is going to private schools and home schools. Over $700,000 last year went to parents who spent the money on vacations and skiing.
I’m surprised it’s as low a percentage in Oregon.
Everyone we knew avoided public schools here.
Maybe it’s the fact that religious schools (Catholic) aren’t considered a charter?
at first I was surprised at CT being so low but we have a higher private school and magnet school % than national averages so thats likely why. Still lower than I expected.
I am not advocating for charter at all BTW. I like the magnet set up instead. Give choice around specialization without giving the specific school too much control over gen ed curriculum
It’s interesting the plains Republican states are the ones that don’t have charter schools
Its a plague. I say this having attended a magnet charter school and enjoyed it. The school I went to was designed to attract the brightest students in the state and beyond and teach them more advanced topics at a deeper level and more accelerated rate than you would ever see in a traditional school. As a senior I was learning linear algebra and differential equations at a considerably more in depth level than the college classes I later took in the same subjects at a relatively prestigious university. The concept was wonderful. The downfall of the school is that because it was a charter school, it was publicly funded but not publicly run. Because it was not publicly run, there was no recourse for parents or students to combat maleficence or negligence committed by staff except for petitioning the board of directors. So my senior year, when the woman who was both guidance counselor anistrator had parents trying to get her fired because she wasn’t doing her guidance counselor job at all, and was being negligent with behavioral issues, with multiple students going to the hospital and several leaving the school, they had nothing they could do because the woman in question was also the most powerful member of the board of directors. She had the jobs because she hired herself, and when parents wanted her fired, she just wrote their kids bad recommendation and tanked their college apps.
And that was a school with an actual positive mission that people believed in. Now all around the country you have tons of school’s whose only mission is “lets keep our kids away from brown people,” or “we have to protect our kids from evil science,” or “lets scam as much money from the government as possible,” and it gets real fucked up, real fast.
The real waste and fraud is AZ charter schools. Wasting my tax dollars on this bullshit
https://networkforpubliceducation.org/charter-scandals/3/?_charter_scandals=az
Does this include online charter schools?
It would be interesting to see these rates juxtaposed with public school teacher pay rates.
AZ gets $13,100 per student average. They have an average class size of 22.7 students, so about $297,000 going into each classrom. This is some of the lowest in the nation. The average teacher gets paid 60k in AZ. Where is the rest going? Maintenece of buildings? Principles and office staff? Beurocracy?
https://usafacts.org/answers/how-are-public-schools-in-the-us-funded/country/united-states/
Washington surprises me, considering there’s a good amount of wealth there
Interesting that there doesn’t appear to be any relation to partisian lean. Top 10 has 3 blue states + DC, 3 red states, and 3 purple states.
I think people are confusing Charter with Private. Charters are a public school. The money they receive follows the students that are enrolled. It isn’t stealing anything. Some communities need options, some don’t. Some are run well and some aren’t. Same standards apply to Charter schools as do Public schools. Private schools are different and a push to privatize all education would have a massive negative impact on high need communities. We’ll run Charters in districts that need options are not the problem
Both my younger sisters did running start and loved it and got much better grades than at traditional high school.
And I agree with your broader point!
Charter schools are a scam.
Charter schools are just a way for racist to deny education to marginalized communities, education should be public and not privatized, not everything needs to have e a profit margin
Comments are closed.