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Ample research has explored the nature and efficacy of urban charter schools since the turn of the century. However, much less attention has been given to the rural charter school sector. Using data obtained from the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools from the 2018–2019 school year, we describe rural charter schools nationally in terms of the students they serve, school-level characteristics, and how innovative they are in their curricula, pedagogical foci, and the student populations they enroll. We then compare states in terms of the statewide policies that have been enacted. Compared to their rural traditional public school counterparts, rural charters enroll more nonwhite students and fewer students eligible for free or reduced-price lunch. Almost half of all rural charters are located in five states, and rural charters are more likely to have non-traditional grade configurations compared to schools in other geographic settings. Most rural charter schools are not affiliated with a CMO or EMO. Hawaii has the largest market share of rural charter school students and also has the greatest proportion of its charter schools located in rural areas. States that do not place caps on the number of charter schools that open were found to have more of their charter schools located in rural areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We seek to build a framework with which researchers can track the trends in charter school specialization and parents can better understand their options. This report examines the entire charter school population operating in the 2018–19 school year and calculates the rate of specialization among charter schools based on key terms found on their websites and marketing materials. For the purposes of this paper, we defined a "focus" as a deliberate form of specialization. We categorized charter schools' foci into three categories. Schools with a "curricular focus," utilize a specialized core curriculum beyond the standard history, science, ELA, and math. Schools with a "pedagogical focus," utilize a specialized method of teaching. Lastly, schools with a "student body focus," serve a nonstandard student body. Within these three categories of foci, we identified nine unique curricular foci, eleven pedagogical foci, and five student body foci. Because many schools have multiple foci across the three categories, we considered the complete combination of a school's specialized foci to be their "model." We found a total of 68 specialized models. In total, roughly two thirds of all charter schools use a specialized model of some sort. The top specialized models were single-focus models: "Personalized Learning" (389), "High Expectations" (370), "STEM" (368), "Classical" (257), and "Art" (223). We provide a comprehensive list of all school models, their definitions, and other relevant information in this report. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]