New Report Reveals Little Growth in the Charter School Sector Despite Years of Increasing Federal Investment

NEW YORK, July 28, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- The National Center for Charter School Accountability (NCCSA), a project of the Network for Public Education, has released the first in a three-part report series titled Charter School Reckoning: Decline, Disillusionment, and Cost. Part I: Decline presents sobering findings on the stagnation, retrenchment, and accelerating closures plaguing the charter school sector.

The report documents that in the first half of 2025, 50 charter schools announced closures, many without warning, adding to the 218 charter schools that closed or never opened between 2022 and 2024. Meanwhile, new school openings have dramatically slowed, with a net gain of only 11 more charter schools between 2022-23 and 2023–24— a stark contrast to the hundreds added annually in prior decades.

Despite the decline, federal funding for charter schools has ballooned to $500 million annually, much of it awarded to schools that later failed, misused funds, or never opened at all. Nearly half of the 50 schools that announced closures received a combined $102 million from the federal Charter Schools Program (CSP).

"It is no longer credible to claim that demand is surging," said Carol Burris, Executive Director of the NCCSA. "This report shows that under-enrollment is now the leading cause of charter failure. Taxpayer dollars should not be used to subsidize school models that abandon families and evade oversight."

The report also highlights the financial abuses of mega-charters, such as Commonwealth Charter Academy, the largest K-12 school in the United States, which spent nearly $9 million on advertising while only 11% of its students were proficient in English and less than 5% in math. Others, like Highlands Community Charter School, were found by state auditors to have fraudulently claimed over $180 million in public funds. At the same time, the report noted that 13% of all charter schools have fewer than 100 students, with more than 50 schools having fewer than 12 students.

"The original promise of charter schools has been hijacked by for-profit interests and lax oversight," said Diane Ravitch, President of the Network for Public Education. "It's time to stop pouring public money into a broken experiment and reinvest in accountable, transparent, and equitable public schools."

Part II of Charter School Reckoning will be released in Fall 2025.

NCCSA is a project of The Network for Public Education, a national public school advocacy organization.

Contact: Carol Burris
cburris@networkforpubliceducation.org 
(646) 678-4477

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SOURCE Network for Public Education