Each year, the Washington State Board of Education reports on public charter school performance. Its 2026 Public Charter Schools Report finds that charter schools are producing real academic results for some of Washington’s most underserved students. It also finds that a broken funding model is quietly shrinking the sector. At a moment when Olympia is wrestling with…
- a $2.3 billion budget deficit,
- record-breaking state budget proposals that are near or north of $80 billion, and
- a controversial 9.9% income tax plan hailed as the most unpopular bill in state history
…voters have a right to know whether the public schools their tax dollars support are working.
Key Findings from the 2026 Public Charter Schools Report
1. Charter students outperform their peers in other public schools. Researchers matched charter students to demographically similar peers at other public schools (OPS) and compared their scores on Washington’s Smarter Balanced Assessment. Fourth through eighth graders at charter schools scored approximately 12 points higher in math and 8 points higher in ELA (English language arts) — equivalent to roughly half a year of additional math progress. Fifth graders outperformed their OPS peers by the widest margin: about 32 points in math and 25 points in ELA, close to a full year of expected learning growth (pp. 12–13).
2. Higher proportions of charter students meet proficiency thresholds. The proportion of fourth through eighth graders at charter schools who met the proficiency cut scores was higher than their OPS peers: 6.1 percentage points higher in math, and 5.2 percentage points higher in ELA. Researchers also found that “almost all charter school student groups performed the same or better than their OPS peers” (pp. 13-14; quotation p. 14).
3. Charter schools disproportionately serve Black and low-income students. Black/African American students make up 25.7% of charter enrollment versus 9.1% in surrounding districts. Low-income students account for 57.7% of charter enrollment versus 50.6% in local districts. The equity stakes of how these schools are funded are substantial (pp. 7–8).
4. Community is charters’ top strength; funding is their top problem. Two independent 2025 studies — one by Strobel Consulting, one by the State Auditor’s Office — found that students and families prize the sense of belonging and personalized attention at charter schools. The same studies found that funding disparities drive teacher turnover, eliminate transportation, limit extracurriculars, and thin out services for students with disabilities (pp. 15–17). The research shows that “charter schools are often expected to deliver outsized results with fewer resources while disproportionately serving students from historically underserved communities” (p. 21).
5. The charter sector is shrinking, not growing. Summit Olympus closed in June 2025 and Why Not You Academy will close in June 2026, both due in part to financial pressure. That leaves 15 schools serving roughly 4,800 students in 2026–27 — and the legislature still has not reopened the authorization window that closed in April 2021 (pp. 5, 7, 23-24), leaving an estimated 1,200 wait-listed families with no new options according to the 2024 Charter School Report (pp. 10 and 57).
Why This Matters
Charter schools enroll fewer than one in 200 Washington public school students. So why should anyone beyond the charter community pay attention? Because the funding inequity documented in this report is not a technical footnote. It is a policy choice with direct consequences.
Charter schools cannot access the local levies or capital bonds that every traditional public school district receives. They patch the gap with philanthropy and grants. The result is a system where schools serving Washington’s most underserved students are closing not because they are failing academically, but because they cannot afford the rent (pp. 21–22).
Washington is currently debating how to spend record public dollars and whether to impose an income tax so they state can spend even more. Serious decisions deserve an honest accounting of what is and is not working in K-12 public education—which is the largest slice of the state budget pie by far (p. 14).
This latest charter school report offers this honest accounting: a small, structurally underfunded segment of the public school system is quietly outperforming expectations — yet phasing out by attrition. That is worth paying attention to because we should be funding what works for students.