Archived Information
The State of Charter Schools 2000 - Fourth-Year Report, January 2000
Student to Teacher Ratio
Many charter school developers reported that they created their schools in part to provide smaller classes and that parents often chose their schools because their class sizes were low. Using a common approximation of class size-the student to teacher ratio-we found that class sizes were slightly smaller, on average, in charter schools than in other public schools, although there was variation across schools with different grade configurations. Charter school class sizes varied more than class sizes in other public schools. Class sizes at charter schools were likely to be smaller when compared to other public schools at schools that served younger students. Charter schools that served high-school students tended to have class sizes that were the same or larger than other public schools.
In 1998-99, most charter schools had a slightly lower teacher to student ratio than did all public schools in the 27 charter states (in 1997-98). The median student to teacher ratio for charter schools was 16.0 as compared to 17.2 for all public schools.
The difference between charter and all public schools in the median teacher to student teacher ratio was about two students per teacher at the primary, K-12, and "other" grade levels. The gap was less than one at the elementary, K-8, middle, middle-high, and high school levels.
The most noticeable difference between the charter school and the all public school median student to teacher ratio was at the ungraded schools, with ungraded charter schools having a much higher student to teacher ratio, 18.8 students per teacher, as compared to 8.8 students per teacher in other public schools.
A higher proportion of all public schools had student to teacher ratios in the mid-range (1620 students per teacher), while charter schools were more likely to have both smaller and larger class sizes. Some cases of high student to teacher ratios for charter schools--especially at the high school level--may reflect the school's use of non-traditional educational approaches such as self-paced computer assisted instruction and distance learning.
Student to Teacher Ratio for Charter Schools and all Public Schools in the 27 Charter States1
NOTE: These data are based on responses from 945 of the 975 open charter schools that responded to the survey. Of the missing 30 schools, 20 did not respond to the relevant survey questions and 10 which reported zero instructional staff were removed from the computation.
SOURCE: U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, Common Core of Data Survey, 1997-98.
Estimated Percentage of Instructional Staff in Charter Schools and All Public Schools in the 27 Charter States
1 We were able to obtain all public schools data on the number of students and the number of classroom teachers by school. Similarly, most of the charter schools (828 out of 945) provided information on number of full-time equivalent teachers, including regular classroom teachers, special area or resource teachers, and long-term substitutes. This number of teachers excludes instructional aides. Because of differing survey questions from year to year, the remaining 117 schools that did not complete a 1999 survey were asked to provide information on instructional staff, including certified classroom teachers, noncertified classroom teachers, resource teachers, certified special education teachers, and other instructional staff (excluding instructional aides). The definition of number of classroom teachers will therefore vary somewhat according to the year in which the school responded.
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