Nearly three years ago Dissident Voice published an article titled “Low Enrollment Plagues Many Charter Schools.” Since then countless news articles have documented low enrollment at many charter schools across the country, raising doubts about, among other things, so-called “long waiting lists” at many charter schools.
Low enrollment has always been one of the four main reasons charter schools close regularly, leaving many families and educators shocked and abandoned. The other three reasons include financial malfeasance, mismanagement, and poor academic performance. Such interrelated problems are intrinsic to school privatization schemes at home and abroad. Privatization typically increases corruption and inefficiency, while lowering quality and restricting democracy.
Low enrollment in many charter schools also throws a wrench in the neoliberal narrative that enrollment is declining in public schools because students are flocking to charter schools. In this context, it should also be noted that charter school owners and operators never address the large number of students who leave charter schools over time and return to their host public school district. Such students are often “pushed out” of charter schools. This is on top of the fact that charter schools typically under-enroll special needs students, homeless students, and English Language Learners.
One of the most recent examples of how low enrollment persists in charter schools and causes many problems comes from North Carolina. A November 17, 2025 article, Charter Review Board considers higher hurdles to school openings, denies all-boys school, and more, takes a deep dive into why so many charter schools close in North Carolina, leaving many families and teachers out in the cold.
The North Carolina Charter Schools Review Board (CSRB) met in mid-November 2025 to discuss raising charter school enrollment requirements because so many charter schools in the state are falling short of meeting established enrollment requirements, thereby causing many charter schools to close (not long after they open). The state requires charter schools to enroll at least 80 students in order to launch a charter school. According to the article, “Catalysts for change [in enrollment requirements] include two recent mid-year closures of under-enrolled schools, along with trend data showing nearly three in four new schools fell short of enrollment projections.” In other words, close to 75% of charter schools are consistently falling behind when it comes to enrollment numbers. Looking at enrollment trends over a 5-year period, data shows that, “charter schools are enrolling about 13% fewer students, on average, in their first year than they projected. Just 26% of schools met or exceeded enrollment projections over the last five years.” But more troubling is the fact that, “over the past two years, the gap between projections and actual enrollment has become much larger.”
By any measure, such numbers and trends reveal a high failure rate and undermine the neoliberal narrative that more charter schools need to open to accommodate the so-called large number of families seeking to enroll their children in charter schools. On the contrary, “Such closures exact a high cost from families,” CSRB members said. Frequent charter school closures, in North Carolina and elsewhere, leave a bad taste in everyone’s mouth and make people think twice about approaching charter schools. Such harsh experiences are not easily forgotten.
It is easy to find many examples of low enrollment in charter schools coast to coast. This problem is a persistent one. The lesson here is that the public must remain vigilant when it comes to endless disinformation from charter school promoters about “how great and unassailable charter schools are” and stand ready to always defend public education and reject school privatization. Today, privatization in every sector, nationally and internationally, is dragging society backward and exacting a heavy toll on everyone. Those obsessed with expanding their own private interests can and must be opposed in order to advance the public interest.