New State Charter School Law Rankings Show Improvements and Opportunities for Growth

Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, Mississippi, Nevada, New York, Wyoming

Last week, the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools (NAPCS) released their annual rankings of charter school laws. Since that week was also National School Choice Week, you may have missed the shorthand and context provided by Todd Ziebarth, senior vice president for state advocacy and support for the NAPCS. The rankings constitute NAPCS’s view of charter school state statutes. We believe it is important for our partners and readers to understand the views of education advocates, especially when the advocates explain their take as well as Mr. Ziebarth. Therefore, we have decided to post Mr. Ziebarth’s NAPCS blog from last week here on the Edfly. 


Earlier this week, we released the tenth edition of our annual state charter school laws rankings report. Since we released the first edition of it in January 2010, three states enacted brand-new legislation relatively well aligned with the model law (Alabama in 2015, Maine in 2011, and Washington in 2012 and 2016). Between 2010 and 2018, 37 states made policy improvements that resulted in increases in their scores in the report. States made the most progress in lifting caps, strengthening charter school and authorizer accountability, and making significant improvements to their facilities policies for charters. 

Some key takeaways from this year’s rankings include: 

One of the issues that has periodically come up over the past decade is the inclusion of states that have recently enacted or substantially overhauled their charter school laws in the report. We had the honor of working side by side with local advocates and lawmakers in many of these states to craft and advocate for these laws. In each of these states, we used our model charter school law as the foundation for these efforts but had to modify it to align with local political and policy contexts. Since our annual rankings report analyzes each state’s law against our model law, it isn’t much of a surprise to see these states rank highly in this effort. 

From our perspective, the point of our annual state charter school laws rankings report is to figure out which states are creating the conditions for high-quality charter schools by providing, among other things, flexibility, funding equity, non-district authorizers, facilities support, and accountability. We think it is important to include all of the states in this analysis, including the new states. We want charter school supporters to have a comprehensive view on which states are creating those conditions. 

It is important to note that we have also completed two versions of another periodic report on the health of the charter school movement in each state (in 2014 and 2016) that analyzes how those policies are playing out in practice by analyzing indicators associated with growth, innovation, and quality. While we include every state with a charter school law in the law rankings report, we only include states that meet certain conditions in the health of the movement report, including that the state’s charter schools serve at least two percent of the state’s students. 

Lastly, it is important to realize that similar policies will play out differently from state to state because of a whole host of local political and policy factors. As advocates, the best that we can do is push for laws that create the conditions for high-quality charter schools by providing, among other things, flexibility, funding equity, non-district authorizers, facilities support, and accountability. And upon their enactment, we need to push equally hard for the implementation conditions that support high-quality charter schools. 

About the Author

Sam Duell is the Policy Director for Charter Schools at ExcelinEd.

Solution Areas:

Private Education Choice, Public Education Choice