Many People Don’t Know What a Charter School Is.

Every year, thousands of Georgia parents fill out lottery applications for schools their children may never get to attend. Not because they can’t afford it, but because thousands of other Georgia families want the same thing and there simply aren’t enough seats.

That school is a public charter school. 

And if you’re not entirely sure what that means, you’re in good company. Charter schools have been at the center of America’s education debate for decades, yet most Americans still struggle to explain what one actually is. Charter School Week is a good time to change that.

A public school, by another name

Let’s start with the most important and most frequently misunderstood fact: A charter school is a public school. It is funded by taxpayers, free to attend and open to any student within its attendance zone who applies. No entrance exam. No tuition. No religious instruction. No selectivity based on income or ability. If more students apply than there are seats (and in Georgia, there almost always are) admission is determined by lottery.

What makes a charter school different from a traditional public school is not who it serves, but how it operates. Under an agreement — a charter — with either a local school district or the State Charter Schools Commission, the school is granted meaningful freedom: over its curriculum, its schedule, its culture and how it deploys its resources. In exchange for that freedom, it accepts a higher level of accountability than most traditional public schools ever face. 

An idea born from frustration, not ideology

Charter schools were not invented by conservatives looking to privatize education. The concept was first proposed in the 1970s by Ray Budde, a teacher and education professor at the University of Massachusetts, whose 1974 paper went largely unnoticed until it was republished in 1988. It was then championed most visibly by Albert Shanker — the longtime president of the American Federation of Teachers, one of the most powerful teachers unions in the country. Shanker’s vision was of teacher-led schools, freed from district bureaucracy, that could experiment and innovate in ways the traditional system couldn’t. The first charter school law was passed in Minnesota in 1991 under Republican Governor Arne Carlson.

For the first two decades after the first charter schools were created in the early 1990s, charter school expansion was a bipartisan project. Democrats and Republicans alike saw in it the promise of better options for families who had none and accountability for results that the traditional system rarely demanded. That consensus has frayed in recent years under the pressure of political polarization. But the underlying idea that public education is better served by freedom and accountability than by uniformity and protection has not changed.

What the data show

Public support for charter schools is strong, despite a significant knowledge gap about what they actually are. According to the 2025 EdChoice Schooling in America Survey, 58% of the general public support charter schools when asked cold — before they’re given any explanation of what a charter school actually is. But when respondents are provided with a clear description, that number jumps to 66%. Among school parents, support rises to 74% once they understand what they’re being asked about. The numbers tell a consistent story: Familiarity drives support. The problem is that most Americans are still forming opinions — or staying silent — without a clear picture of what they’re actually evaluating.

What is beyond dispute is the demand. While traditional public school enrollment has declined since the pandemic, charter school enrollment has continued to grow, reaching an all-time high of 3.8 million students (6.6% of all students), according to recent data.

Where Georgia stands and where it falls short

Georgia has nearly 100 public charter schools, and roughly 65,000 students depend on them for their education each day. But over 21,000 more are on waiting lists and the pipeline of new schools has slowed to nearly a stop because not enough schools are being authorized.In Georgia, a charter school can be approved one of two ways: by the local school district, or by the State Charter Schools Commission, a separate state-level body.

Local school districts have been deeply resistant to approving anything new. In the past five years, three locally authorized charter campuses did open, but all three were expansions of networks that already existed. None was a new, independent charter organization.

The State Charter Schools Commission, meanwhile, has approved dozens of new schools in the same period. But it is one body covering the entire state, and it was never designed to shoulder the load alone.

Meanwhile, Georgia has watched neighboring states build robust charter sectors while its own has stagnated. Florida now has over 408,000 students enrolled in public charter schools — a state with about 70% more K-12 students than Georgia, yet around six times the charter school enrollment. That gap does not reflect a difference in what Georgia families want. It reflects a difference in what Georgia’s system has been willing to give them.

Charter School Week is an invitation to look honestly at a question that Georgia has been slow to answer: If thousands of families are asking for something, filling out applications and entering lotteries and sitting on waiting lists year after year, what is the justification for telling them no?

A charter school is a public school. It belongs to the public. The families on those waiting lists are the public. Georgia’s education system should take better steps to accommodate them.