“Charter school laws have been arguably the most influential school reform efforts of the past several decades,” write economists Douglas Harris and Feng Chen.

Since the first law creating these independent public schools of choice was passed in 1991, we’ve learned many lessons about their impact on students, the traditional K-12 system, and the communities where they exist. Here are three of those lessons:

1. Charter schools reduce academic inequality by closing student achievement gaps.

2. Charter schools raise the overall quality of public schools.

3. Creating more charter schools will improve the quality of K-12 public schools and reduce inequality in America.

This is what I call the virtuous improvement cycle of charter schools.

A new report from PPI released in October 2024 concludes with recommendations for further research into why increased public school choice lifts school quality and how cities that currently have even a small share of public charter school students can strengthen their gapnarrowing capacity.

New research from the National Bureau of Economic Research by Sarah Cohodes (University of Michigan) and Astrid Pineda (Columbia University) finds that both urban and nonurban charter schools in Massachusetts increase college enrollment and college graduation rates compared to district peers. 

2023 marked a special anniversary for public school choice in Tennessee: 20 years of public charter schools in the state. Our state’s first public charter schools opened their doors in 2003 in Chattanooga, Nashville, and Memphis. As you read the stories in this report – stories of innovative models for elementary schools creating space for all students to thrive, of high school students beating the odds, of tireless advocates who have dedicated their time and energy to students – consider the number of lives that have been changed thanks to the work of Tennessee’s public charter schools over the last 20 years.

As a Matter of Fact: The National Charter School Study III 2023 (NCSSIII) is the third national study by CREDO evaluating the academic progress of students enrolled in charter schools in the United States. The current report presents findings from 2014 to 2019, which yields four periods of year-to-year student growth as measured by state achievement tests. It includes data from 29 states plus Washington, D.C., and New York City, which for convenience we report as 31 states. In addition, because we have used a common methodology across the three studies, we can combine results into trends to support insights of the performance of students enrolled in charter schools over the past 15 years.