Where do American children go to school?

Ranking states by percentage of students homeschooled, in charter schools, in magnet schools, and in open enrollment

Each year, EdChoice publishes what we call The EdChoice Share. This tracks the number of students in the different sectors of American education. Our most recent numbers tell us that, nationally:

• 74.8% of students attend a traditional public school

• 6.8% attend private school not using an educational choice program

• 6.6% attend a charter school

• 4.9% attend a magnet school

• 4.7% are homeschooled

• 2.2% of students utilize an educational choice program to attend private school

But these are national numbers. Using the data on our Edchoice Share page, we can also look state by state. For example, while nationally just over 2% of students participate in an education savings account (ESA), voucher, tax-credit scholarship, tax-credit ESA, or refundable tax credit program, states like Arizona and Florida see rates much higher. In Florida, 13% of students utilize a private school choice program. In Arizona, it is 10%.

But this is just one piece of the educational freedom puzzle in America. School choice can take many different forms. Traditionally, it came in the form of families choosing to live in a home zoned for a public school they wanted their child to attend. Homeschooling is quite old as well, though states have different rules and regulations around homeschooling that could impact family decision-making. The same is true with self-funded private school.

States also have different public school choice programs. These include:

• Charter schools: Public schools that have more control over their budget, staff, and curriculum, and are exempt from many existing public school regulations.

• Magnet schools: Elementary, middle, or high schools that offer special curricula capable of attracting (like a magnet) students of different social, economic, ethnic, and racial backgrounds.

• Inter-district open enrollment: A program that allows a student enrolled in public school to select and transfer to a public school of their choice, rather than attending a school based on where they live. A student can be allowed to transfer to a public school in another district (called “INTER-district”).

EdChoice tracks and reports enrollment in all of these sectors. On our EdChoice share page, we have graphs for every state tracking enrollment over time, so you can see not only where states are today, but where they have been over the past decade. With these data we can also rank the top ten states for each of the different sectors we track.

Here are the top ten for homeschooling, charter schooling, magnet schooling, and open enrollment.

Homeschool Share

Our homeschool numbers come from the great work of Johns Hopkins University’s Angela Watson and the Johns Hopkins Homeschool Hub. One note, they rely on data that is publicly reported directly from states. There are a handful of states that do not report official data on homeschoolers. In those cases, estimates on homeschoolers by state comes from the Household Pulse Survey from the Census Bureau.

It turns out that Alaska is not just the largest state in the union, it also has the largest homeschool population as a percentage of all students in the state. More than one in ten Alaska students are homeschooled. (You can listen to a podcast here with EdChoice’s Mike McShane and Stacey McIntosh and John Brown of Mat-Su Central High School in Wasilla to hear about homeschooling in the wild Alaskan environment and the way the school has partnered with homeschooling families over the years.)

Charter School Share

We get our charter school enrollment data from our friends at the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools. The District of Columbia is far and away the leader in charter school enrollment, and given its density, perhaps that makes sense. But a decidedly less dense state, Arizona, is in second place, with almost one in five students in that state attending a charter school. All of the states in the top 10 have more than 10% of students enrolled in charter schools.

Magnet School Share

In our last two tables, we will look at choice options within the traditional public schooling sector. Magnet schools predate charter schools, and we can see have a high level of penetration in states like Florida and Maryland. We get our magnet school data from NCES.

Inter-District Open Enrollment Share

We go state by state through state department of education websites (when applicable) to get inter-district enrollment numbers. Two notes. First, for the purpose of this post, we decided to include states that have mandatory as well as voluntary inter-district open enrollment policies. You can click here for more information on which type of inter-district open enrollment each state allows. Second, the numbers for inter-district enrollment are some of the wonkiest ones that we search for, and data quality and availability varies wildly from state to state. Take these rankings with a grain of salt. That said, Nebraska, Wisconsin, and Iowa see at least one in every fifteen students utilizing open enrollment.

If you’re interested in seeing where your state stacks up, head over to our EdChoice Share page and get all the information.