Debate over charter school policy is fierce. Only the dispute over the use of student standardized test scores to evaluate teachers is more intense. The argument is about whether privatizing the school system with charter schools hurts or helps American public education.
Charter Schools Are Public Schools
The first thing to make clear is that charter schools are public schools. Parents and the general public can get confused about this. Charter schools are funded by the government just like regular public schools. But unlike regular schools, charters are managed by education contractors that can be either non-profit or for-profit corporations. They can require uniforms, use non-union teachers, or not offer special ed or transportation.
Though charter schools are public, they can limit the number of students they accept, and even have wait lists like private schools. But when they are “oversubscribed,” charter schools cannot be selective like private schools. They must admit students by lottery. Neighborhood schools are required to enroll any student in their district who shows up, even if facilities are over capacity.
Charter schools are public schools. Students attend by choice, not by residential assignment.
When and How Did Charter Schools Get Started?
Charter schools emerged in the 1990s when ideas about school choice and accountability gained favor with governors. No Child Left Behind, passed in 2001, lent federal support to the charter movement.
Before charter schools, if a neighborhood school performed poorly, parents had few or no options. Economists convinced policymakers that if parents had more schools to choose from, the competitive dynamics of free-markets could take effect. Choice would incentivize schools to provide a good education or risk losing students to better schools.
Lawmakers freed charter school operators from many traditional school regulations, including teacher union contracts. The theory was that if charters were unleashed from the restraints of school bureaucracy, they could innovate and solve the intractable problems in education. Charters became the R & D division of public education. In exchange for this freedom from regulations, laws held charter operators accountable to hit student achievement targets, or risk being shut down.
How Does a Charter School Get Started?
To start a charter school, education contractors apply for a “charter” with a state authorizing organization, such as a school district, university, municipality, or state board. State to state, laws are quite different. Politics at the state level determine if laws restrain or promote charter school expansion.
In 1992, Minnesota started the first charter school. Since then 41 states and Washington D.C., have passed charter laws. 
Charter schools now serve 4.2% of U.S. public school students. In the 2012-13 school year, 2.28 million students attend 6,000 charter schools, compared to 47 million students attending 90,000 regular public schools.*
Do Charter Schools Outperform Traditional Schools?
For supporters and adversaries of school choice policy, the performance of charters vs. traditional schools matters a great deal. If charters outdo regular schools, then free market policy works; otherwise, it doesn't. Organizations with both pro and con leanings have conducted over 200 studies. The results are mixed.
The most current, large-scale, well-respected research is Stanford’s CREDO Study. 
It compared the performance of students attending charters schools with students of similar demographics in nearby traditional schools. The study found that 17% of charter schools perform better, 46% perform about the same, and 37% perform worse than traditional schools. The study also uncovered that charter schools have greater variance in quality than traditional schools.
For parents, the general performance of charters schools vs. traditional schools doesn’t matter quite so much. The more pertinent question is whether the charter schools in their area are better for their children than their assigned school.
What are the Arguments For and Against Charter Schools?
Because charter schools have operated since 1991, researchers have had plenty time to study impacts on student achievement. They found:
- Test scores do not consistently support the argument that competition from school choice will increase student achievement.
- Results generally don’t support the argument that structural conditions in public education, like bureaucracy and teacher unions, cause poor or stagnant performance.
- Research indicates that some charter schools do better and some do worse than regular public schools.
What charter schools did do was unleash innovation, serving an R & D function for public education. Different educational theories have been tested. Some had uncommon success; most did not improve student achievement.
For example, the Gates Foundation gave $2 billion over a decade to test whether small high schools could improve student achievement better than large ones, only to find out they didn’t. Small schools increased graduation rates, but not student achievement. As Gates says, now we know to try something else.
But, KIPP Charter Schools did increase achievement for students in urban areas from low socioeconomic backgrounds. Freed from regulations, KIPP required 9.5 hour schools days, Saturday school, 3 weeks of summer school, parental contracts, and extra homework. By increasing learning time, KIPP increased student scores. KIPP’s success gives momentum to policies to extend hours in regular schools.
Opponents of charter schools say free-market dynamics have failed to produce promised outcomes. Increasing student achievement is harder than what free-markets can accomplish. Poverty, they say, is the problem. But charter school leaders say teachers use poverty as an excuse, instead of working harder. Most teachers, and public opinion, say the "no-excuses" argument is out of touch with ground level realities in education.
What Does This Mean for Parents?
Despite the intense national debate over charter schools, the impact for parents is based on where you reside, since state law determines charter school options. If you live in a robust charter school area, like D.C., you are familiar with the impact of the policy. If not, most likely charter schools don’t factor much in decision-making about your children’s education.
The table below shows the states with the highest percentage of charter schools. 
In areas with more school choice, parents must research and evaluate all school options, navigate the application process at each school, and await lottery results in oversubscribed charters. This is complicated work for parents, and creates more uncertainty for students.
But, when the neighborhood school is inadequate, more school choice can make a material difference in the lives of children.
Additional Information:
The Public Charter School Dashboard is a comprehensive resource from the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools with data about every charter school in the U.S.
New Grades on Charter Schools, by Andrew Rotherham, Time. A pro-charter eduwonk debunks the current arguments against charter schools arising from new research on their performance.
Why States Should Say 'No Thanks' to Charter Schools, Diane Ravitch, Washington Post. Author of The Life and Death of the Great American School System, a PCM Top 10 Book for Parents, makes, in quick bullet points, the current arguments against charter school policy.
What Should Parents Know About Charter Schools? Paul Hill, NPR. Professor at University of Washington talks about the benefits and drawbacks of charter schools.
*Figures on number of charter schools and charter school students updated to reflect 2012-13 school year. Data from NAPCS.
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