U.S. Charter School Growth and Distribution Over a Decade

More than 2,300 charter schools served over 575,000 students across 34 states and the District of Columbia at the time of the dataset's creation. The data, sourced from a paper by Katrina Bulkley, documents the rapid expansion of these autonomous public schools from a small number to a significant national presence. It likely contains information on school locations, enrollment figures, and the policy context of charter contracts.

Use Cases

• Analyzing geographic distribution of charter schools based on state-level concentration data
• Studying the relationship between school autonomy and accountability based on the charter contract framework
• Modeling the growth trajectory of charter school enrollment over a decade
• Comparing charter school prevalence across states like Arizona, California, Florida, Michigan, and Texas

Strengths

• Includes specific national totals: over 2,300 schools and 575,000 students
• Provides state-level detail, noting Arizona has over 400 charter schools and four other states have over 150 each
• Contextualizes data with the policy theory behind charter school contracts

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment
• Last update date is unknown; freshness unverified

Provenance

Source

Katrina Bulkley via paperswithcode

Time Range

Covers a decade of growth, specific years unknown

Geography

United States, covering 34 states and the District of Columbia