2006: Charter Enrollment Tops One Million Students

Just fifteen years after the nation’s first charter schools law was passed, total charter enrollment surpassed 1 million students—or about 2% of national public school enrollment—in 3,600 schools across 40 states. This milestone demonstrated both the demand from families and the growing capacity of the charter community to replicate school models that achieved success for students, which demonstrated that innovation could be scaled.

Two philanthropists, John Walton and Don Fisher, had an idea of how to better harness philanthropic support to continue this growth. The result was the 2006 founding of the Charter School Growth Fund (CSGF). CSGF President and CEO Kevin Hall recalls that both Walton and Fisher saw the promise in emerging networks, but there was not a way to support them. “The full purpose was to enable great networks to be able to access capital and support and be able to work together to open more schools and serve more students,” said Hall. “And this whole concept of a flourishing, high performing network of nonprofit charter schools was a nascent concept, but had not yet been proven.” Early CSGF funding supported networks that included IDEA Public Schools in Texas, Noble Network of Charter Schools in Chicago, Success Academy in New York City, and Rocketship Public Schools in California.  

Candidates for elective office also began embracing the replication of high-performing charters as a solution. One such candidate was Corey Booker, who was elected the 38^th mayor of Newark in 2006 on a platform that included growing charter schools in that city.

The most visible use of replication, though, was in New Orleans. After Hurricane Katrina devastated the city in 2005, the state’s Recovery School District assumed control of most of the city’s schools. Rather than rebuilding the city’s system, the Recovery School District began to implement a strategy of transforming it into a system of charter schools. This decision was both unprecedented and controversial, but also demonstrated what was possible.