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Charter School

A publicly funded school that operates independently of the traditional school district system under a charter (contract) that grants operational flexibility in exchange for accountability for results.

Reviewed by OpenSchoolData Editorial Team

How It Works

Charter schools are public schools, they receive public funding, cannot charge tuition, and must accept all students (using a lottery if oversubscribed). However, they operate under a charter granted by an authorizer (typically a school district, state agency, or university) that specifies the school's mission, educational program, and performance targets. If the school fails to meet its charter terms, the authorizer can revoke the charter and close the school. There are approximately 7,800 charter schools in the United States, enrolling about 3.7 million students, roughly 7% of all public school students. Charter school quality varies enormously. Research from Stanford University's Center for Research on Education Outcomes (CREDO) finds that about 30% of charter schools outperform their local district schools, 40% perform about the same, and 30% perform worse. Urban charter schools tend to show the strongest results, particularly charter management organizations (CMOs) with track records like KIPP, Success Academy, and Uncommon Schools. On OpenSchoolData, charter schools are identified with a "Charter" tag and can be filtered and compared directly against traditional public schools. OpenSchoolData presents the same data for charter and traditional public schools, enrollment, demographics, proficiency rates, and graduation rates, allowing parents to make apples-to-apples comparisons based on outcomes rather than governance structure.

Related Terms

  • Magnet School, A public school with a specialized curriculum or theme, such as STEM, performing arts, or International Baccalaureate, designed to attract students from across a district or region regardless of neighborhood attendance zones.
  • School Choice, The principle and set of policies that allow families to choose which school their child attends rather than being assigned to a school based solely on residential address.
  • School Accountability, The system by which schools and districts are held responsible for student outcomes, including state ratings, improvement plans, and potential interventions for chronically low-performing schools.

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Real federal data: NCES CCD enrollment (2022), EDFacts proficiency rates (2020, district-level), EDFacts graduation rates (2019, district-level).

About This Definition

This definition is part of the OpenSchoolData Education Glossary, 33 terms explaining how school performance data works in the United States. All definitions are written in plain language for parents, educators, journalists, and researchers.

Charter School is one of the U.S. K-12 school outcomes and enrollment concepts that recurs across this site. The definition above is the technical answer; the paragraphs below add the practical context for how the concept connects to the NCES Common Core of Data and EDFacts data behind every per-entity page on the site.

In the NCES Common Core of Data and EDFacts data, this concept shapes one or more of the fields that drive the per-entity grades and rankings on this site. The methodology page describes which fields feed into which output; this glossary entry documents the underlying term.

Source: NCES Common Core of Data, 2026.