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Charter School Demographics & Patterns
The U.S. Department of Education is now launching the Race to the Top program. One facet of this program is intended to strengthen and expand charter schools by providing funds to state departments of education. Charter schools are publicly funded elementary or secondary schools that have reduced regulations relative to other public schools. Charter schools are chartered by individual states, though some states have no charter school program. This section examines the characteristics of charter schools by state and geographic distribution of charter schools based on preliminary 2008-09 state reported data. School by School Detail & Rankings. The new, related state-by-state K-12 schools interactive ranking tables show all K-12 schools in each state based on data reported by state education agencies for the 2008-09 school year. See Arizona schools at http://proximityone.com/k12schools/azschools.htm; click on left column links to view a ranking table for any state. By sorting ascending on the charter school column, you can see the set of charter schools for the state. Charter schools have a value/code of 1 in the charter column. National & State by State Summary Data. As of the 2008-09 school year, approximately 2.5% of America's public elementary and secondary regular school students were enrolled in charter schools. Eleven states had no charter schools. States with percent enrolled in charter schools over 5 percent included Arizona (9.1%), Colorado (6.9%) and Michigan (6.2%). The District of Columbia had 33.4 percent students enrolled in charter schools. Charter Schools, 2008-09 Interactive Ranking Table State-by-State Detail. Use the interactive ranking table below to rank/compare characteristics of charter schools by state. These data have been developed using the national scope school level database. Each row corresponds to a state and shows the number of charter schools, students and teacher FTE (full-time equivalence) for the 2008-09 school year. See header column descriptions below table. Click column header to sort; click again to sort other direction. Ranking Tables Main Page Column descriptions All data are for regular active K-12 public schools 1 Schools -- total schools 2 Students -- total students in schools 3 TchFTE -- teacher FTE (full-time equivalence) in schools 4 ChSchools -- total charter schools 5 ChStudents -- total students in charter schools 6 ChTchFTE -- teacher FTE (full-time equivalence) in charter schools 7 %ChSch -- percent charter schools of total schools (%item4 of item1) 8 %ChStds -- percent charter school students of total students (%item5 of item2) 9 %ChTchFTE -- percent charter TchFTE of total TchFTE (%item6 of item3) Geographic Distribution within State. While the table provides useful state by state summary data, it reveals nothing about the geographic distribution of charter schools within a state. For example, Missouri's 38 charter schools are all in the Kansas City or St. Louis area. The following map shows the distribution/location of charter schools in the 48 contiguous states. A CommunityViewer GIS project, with national scope K-12 schools layer/shapefile, has been used to develop this view. A query was applied to show only charter schools. Use this project as a starting point for further anlayses. Add your own data ... create alternative thematic maps and perform geospatial analyses. 
These pattern views lay the groundwork for a myriad of further questions. Such as, how are the number of charter schools, students, and teachers changing? What will be the geographic distribution or productive impact of charter schools? Additional Information Proximity develops geodemographic-economic data and analytical tools and helps organizations knit together and use diverse data in a decision-making and analytical framework. We develop custom demographic/economic estimates and projections, develop geographic and geocoded address files, and assist with impact and geospatial analyses. Wide-ranging organizations use our tools (software, data, methodologies) to analyze their own data integrated with other data. Contact Proximity (888-364-7656) with questions about data covered in this section or to discuss custom estimates, projections or analyses for your areas of interest. |
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