Charter School Enrollment & Performance Before, During, and After the COVID19 Pandemic

Abstract Throughout the 21st century, students have increasingly pursued alternative options to traditional public schools through the expansion of school choice options. This trend was accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic when charter school enrollment grew by the largest increase in the last decade. However, despite this growth, little is known about the performance of students in charter schools during and post-pandemic. Given the autonomy generally afforded to charter schools, we hypothesize that these schools were better positioned to pivot during the pandemic to better serve students. In this study, we survey school leaders to understand the challenges they faced during and post-pandemic and the strategies they used to address these challenges, including learning loss. We will compare and contrast the differences between traditional public schools and charter schools.