Compared to most other states, charter schools – privately-operated schools that compete with traditional public schools – play an extremely small role in Maine’s education system, according to enrollment data from the National Center for Education Statistics.
The map below illustrates the proportion of each state’s students that were enrolled in charter schools for the 2013-2014 school year. Mouse over the map to view detailed statistics.
Note: Virginia’s charter school enrollment – 603 students – amounts to less than 1/10th of 1% of the state’s total school population.
In the most recent data available from the 2013-2014 school year, Maine had 384 students enrolled in five licensed charter schools: roughly 1/5th of 1% of the state’s entire public school enrollment.
Only 12 other states had a lower rate of enrollment for charter schools, and 10 of those states didn’t have any charter schools at all.
Since then, Maine has licensed additional charter schools and enrollment has increased, although charter schools’ overall role in the educational system remains small. In the 2016-2017 school year, Maine had licensed seven brick-and-mortar charter schools in addition to two virtual charter schools.
In spite of that growth, those schools’ estimated enrollment in the current school year amounts to about 2,000 students – roughly 1% of the state’s entire student population.
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