The last decade’s political shifts have banished many previously popular education reforms to the proverbial wilderness. Charter schools, perhaps the most successful and lasting education reform in recent history, are not immune to these changes. It’s well-documented that the national charter movement faces a pivotal and potentially perilous moment.
The bipartisan school reform consensus that enabled the meteoric rise of charter schools has eroded. Instead, Republicans are passing sweeping voucher and education savings account (ESA) legislation in red states at record speed. With a few exceptions, Democrats have largely walked away from public school choice and have proposed no vision for K–12 public education other than dumping more money into the failed status quo. And now the Supreme Court looks poised to deliver an opinion that could forever change the nature of charter schooling as we know it.
There is a real threat that charters will be a casualty of these shifting dynamics. That would be a terrible outcome for the more than 3.8 million students who attend charter schools across the country.
Yet we also continue to see signs that state-level charter movements are strong—and growing stronger, at least in red states. Two years ago, legislation in Ohio dramatically narrowed the funding gap for charters during a year when eligibility for private school vouchers became universal. Last year, Iowa started sending more money to charter schools and allocating state resources to support their growth while also investing more resources in an expansion of its ESA program.
In Florida, many pro-charter bills worked their way through the state legislature this year, even as the state is hailed as a national leader in private school choice. Tennessee recently passed important structural charter school reforms alongside a universal voucher program.
My home state of Indiana is no different. Last month, charter schools concluded their most successful legislative session since the original law’s passage in 2001. This happened alongside legislators making Indiana’s voucher program universal beginning in 2026.
- Charters will receive a pro-rata share of local operations property tax levies and future operating referenda, erasing the majority of a $7,900 per-pupil funding disparity.
- Communities now have a mechanism to create independent facilities and transportation authorities to serve all students in a given geography.
- A new law prevents the weaponization of the zoning process by allowing charter schools to be an approved use within any zoning category and preventing the denial of a zoning request based on the type of school.
- Legislators maintained a supplemental state charter school grant even as budget writers made major cuts in other areas to address a projected budget shortfall.
So, what lessons can charter advocates take from these recent victories? Here are four places to start.
- Establish a clear vision for how charters fit into a broad choice ecosystem. Charter leaders have a decision to make when it comes to advocacy. They can exclusively lock arms with traditional public schools and risk positioning charters as part of the entrenched status quo. The other option for red state advocates is to accept that choice, in all its forms, is here to stay and then explain how public school choice is essential to a comprehensive choice strategy. That includes being clear about what differentiates it from other forms of choice (i.e., charters are free, public, and open to all). This both/and approach provides a clear rationale for how legislators can support vouchers and ESAs while also expanding choice within the public school system. If it’s an either/or strategy, charters will lose every time.
- Build a big-tent choice advocacy coalition. For any advocacy effort to be successful, advocates must develop a clear-eyed view of who holds power and where they hold it. Charter sector leaders tend to be a politically progressive group, so, understandably, advocates are often hesitant to work primarily with a political party they don’t identify with. For charter advocates to be successful in red states, though, they must work in coalition with other choice advocates to build the political power necessary to successfully persuade policymakers to view charters as an essential part of the broader choice agenda. This requires an intense, singular focus on achieving education policy wins even when advocates might disagree with the majority party on other hot-button issues.
- Relentlessly expand the Overton window. It took several attempts, beginning in 1994, for state Senator Teresa Lubbers and others to finally get the original Indiana charter law across the finish line in 2001. More recently, Indiana charter advocates spent five legislative sessions working up to the historic reforms that passed into law this year. Sharing local property taxes, for example, seemed like an impossible political task just a few years ago. But advocates continued to work with legislators to introduce and advocate for our preferred comprehensive legislation—there was no negotiating against ourselves. Those policy ideas made a little more headway each year until seemingly marginal progress turned into an avalanche of legislative wins.
- Outcomes still matter. In an era where the bipartisan consensus on school accountability has vanished, it can seem like there is no political constituency that values quantifiable academic outcomes. Our experience in Indiana, however, runs counter to that. Luckily, Indianapolis charter schools are the most widely studied education intervention in the history of Indiana. And the findings from those studies are consistently strong. These data were our most powerful advocacy tool, so much so that legislators accurately recited research findings in committee hearings and on the floor of the House and Senate. Without that strong research base, it would have been unlikely for legislators to use political capital to support charter school students while dozens of other high-profile policy challenges filled their plate.
The reports of the death of charter schools have been greatly exaggerated—at least in Republican-led states. Charter advocates across the country are showing that big policy change is still possible even amid rapidly expanding private school choice programs and fraying national political coalitions. A growing number of states are proving that expanding private school choice doesn’t have to come at the expense of the public version. Based on their popularity and outcomes for students, charter schools are worth the fight.
The only thing slowing us down—other than perhaps a Supreme Court ruling—is our own lack of audacity and foresight to think big and build winning coalitions. We have a roadmap for a new era of charter school success, especially in red states. The question becomes: Will we follow it, or will we find ourselves lost in the wilderness with no way out?
