California Charter School Distribution 2005-06

May 2006
Distribution by school district type
As the chart shows, the distribution of open charter schools among different types of school districts varies somewhat from the distribution of noncharter schools, with a smaller proportion of charter schools in unified districts.

Data: California Department of Education (CDE), EdSource 6/06

Geographic distribution of charter schools
As of March, 2004, about 5% of all California public schools were charters. However, among the state's 58 counties, the distribution of charter schools varied widely, neither corresponding to regions within the state nor the size of the county. For example, the counties with no charter schools and the counties with the highest proportion of charter schools both tended to be small and rural. A total of 12 counties had no charter schools at all. They ranged in size from Alpine County with a total of nine schools to Imperial County with 65 schools.

Conversely, in eight small counties charter schools made up 10% or more of all schools. Those counties were Kings, Mendocino, Mono, Nevada, Santa Cruz, Shasta, Stanislaus, and Yuba.