Even as the Trump administration boosts federal funding for charter schools, three states are unlikely to seek the money. Why?
The answer is simple: The three states—Nebraska, South Dakota, and Vermont—do not allow charter schools.
That is the case even though charter schools have continued to expand across the country, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. In 2023, Montana joined the District of Columbia and 45 other states in the charter school ranks. This April, North Dakota became the 47th state to pass a charter authorization law. Even with these developments, experts are unsure if charters will take off in the three holdouts.
“These are states that love their rural public schools, that depend upon their rural public schools,” said Carol Burris, executive director of the Network for Public Education, an advocacy group focused on supporting and improving traditional public schools. “These are not states that are going to be welcoming charter schools.”
Even so, Montana and North Dakota, which have the second and fourth highest percentages of rural schools nationwide, respectively, recently passed legislation to allow charter schools. Looking at why those two states changed their positions offers hints at what might happen in the last three states without charter schools.
Why charters made their way into North Dakota
Historically, rural states have been the most resistant to charters, Burris said. “You’re not going to have a lot of charter schools in North Dakota. It’s rural, and it’s small,” she added.
“North Dakotans traditionally value local control and fiscal prudence, which has contributed to a cautious approach toward new state-funded educational models,” State Superintendent for Public Instruction Kirsten Baesler said in in an email interview. Baesler was nominated by President Donald Trump to serve as the assistant secretary of elementary and secondary education in the U.S. Department of Education. Her nomination still must be confirmed by Congress.
But a desire for more school choice among legislators and voters changed things, Baesler said, which prompted the legislature to pass the new law allowing charters. This new position—approved by the state’s super majority Republican legislature—also aligns more closely with the Trump administration’s policies on K-12 education.
Advocates believe that charter schools can thrive in rural states.
“Families in rural areas deserve high-quality public schools tailored to their kids’ needs,” Todd Ziebarth, the senior vice president for state advocacy and support at the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, said in an email interview. “Today, about 11% of charter students are in rural schools, which often serve as vital hubs for their communities and can prevent long bus rides or school closures.”
Baesler pointed out that rural communities could benefit from charter schools that use instructional models such as project-based learning or agricultural or energy-focused curricula, or have partnerships with local businesses to help kids get jobs when they graduate.
North Dakota has not received any formal charter applications yet, Baesler said. But she’s heard from teachers in small- and mid-sized communities that they are interested in starting up charter schools. A few non-religious private schools have also asked about converting into public charter schools to expand access to a wider range of students.
Ziebarth said there’s also interest from parents in designing charters focused on serving Native American students and students with disabilities.
How charters are taking shape in Montana
In Montana, the charter school story overlaps somewhat with North Dakota. Rural Montana communities are often dependent on their schools as town hubs and sources of employment. That may help explain why Montana was slow to authorize charter schools, said Superintendent of Public Instruction Susie Hedalen.
“People felt pretty confident, had a lot of trust in their school, and just wanted things to stay the way they were,” Hedalen said.
So what changed?
Politics, according to Burris.
“It depends on the legislature. Charter schools have become a cause of the Republican Party,” she said. When Montana had a governor who was a Democrat, the state “rejected charter schools,” she said.
The Montana legislature has passed two charter authorization laws, but one is currently held up in courts.
The key difference between the two laws is in who is allowed to authorize charter schools. The current charter school law has a sole authorizer: the state board of education, Hedalen said. But the second law—held up in courts—would create “community choice charters” approved by a different state authorizer specifically tasked with overseeing charter schools. A planning board is actively meeting to discuss those schools, but cannot authorize any yet, Hedalen said.
Teachers’ unions and public school advocates sued to block the law, because they said it would undermine the state constitution’s guarantee of a quality public education.
As it is, many of the charter schools that have opened are overseen by traditional public school boards.
“Some of [the local school boards] are going to do it, and then eventually what’s going to happen is they’re going to say, ‘hey, this isn’t working out.’ They’re going to start closing them,” Burris hypothesized, citing charter school closures due to low enrollment in other states.
But as of now, demand seems high. Last school year, the first 17 charters in the state opened. Now, over 20 charters have been authorized in the state.
Charter school models vary widely
Burris expressed doubts that Nebraska or Vermont will implement any kind of charter authorization laws, because Nebraska has strong support for its public schools and Vermont’s legislature is controlled by Democrats.
She noted that state laws vary significantly in how they allow charter schools to be authorized and run. “It really is the Wild West,” said Burris.
Some states only permit a sole authorizer, while others allow institutions of higher education or nonprofit agencies to authorize charter schools. Another differentiator is whether the state prohibits for-profit entities from managing charter schools.
North Dakota opted not to prohibit for-profit management, with Baesler saying that nonprofit and for-profit entities can oversee charters “provided the managing entity can demonstrate prior success in operating charter schools in other states.”
States can also implement caps on charter expansion (Montana and North Dakota did not opt to limit growth). Of the states that cap charter growth, Ziebarth said only five “significantly restrict” charter expansion: Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New York, and Washington. “In most states with caps, demand exceeds the cap, and many students sit on charter school waiting lists,” he said.
Variation also exists in whether charter school teachers are required to be certified, whether they’re exempt from collective bargaining, and how long charter renewals last. And charter laws frequently change due to political shifts, Burris said.
“What we’ll see very often is a law that starts as very tight—that has very good protections—all of a sudden, especially as [state] legislatures become more red with super majorities, we start to see these laws loosen up,” she noted.
Montana has paid close attention to the Trump administration’s support for school choice. Hedalen said state leaders “knew that the president and Secretary [Linda] McMahon were supportive of charter schools and parent choices” and were awaiting potential federal policy changes.
Now that increased federal funding for charters has been allocated, Hedalen said she has sent information out to school and district leaders. “We’ll be interested to see if they take advantage of it,” she said.
The $60 million in increased funding for charter school grants aims to fund the creation of new charter schools, and maintenance and expansion for existing schools. McMahon said in a video posted to the Department of Education website that the agency will target schools that focus on STEM, career and technical education, and classical education.
Ziebarth expects more charter growth across the nation. “As more families demand options and more policymakers prioritize student-centered solutions,” charters will continue to expand, he predicted.
The state department of education for South Dakota did not have anyone available for an interview by Education Week’s deadline, and the Vermont Agency of Education did not respond to a request for comment.
Vermont’s current secretary of education, appointed by the state’s Republican governor, previously worked for a for-profit charter school management company.
A spokesperson for the Nebraska Department of Education told Education Week that previous attempts at changing state law to permit charter schools have failed. “Nebraska does not have charter schools because our current state law does not authorize them,” the spokesperson said.
