Believing in Public Education: A Demographic and State-level Analysis of Public Charter School and District Public School Enrollment Trends is a new data analysis that examines enrollment trends during the last four school years (2019-2023). Over the last four school years (2019-20 to 2022-23), charter schools have gained more than 300,000 students, an increase of 9%. Meanwhile, district public schools have been unable to recover the 1.5 million students they lost during the pandemic, a 3.5% loss. The report examined data for White, Black, and Hispanic students in 26 of 42 states included in the analysis. All three groups are continuing to choose charter schools—and, in some cases, charter school enrollment growth is even outpacing expected numbers based on population growth trends.
