Today’s Washington Post looks at trends in this form of school choice:

Nationwide, about 2.5 million public school students were enrolled in charter schools last school year, up from 789,000 a decade earlier, according to the most recent enrollment estimates from the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools. Last year, the number of students enrolled increased by 12.6 percent from the year before. 

There were 6,400 charter schools in the 42 states that permit them in the 2013-2014 school year. In recent years, between 500 and 600 new charter schools have opened each year, and between 150 and 200 schools have closed annually for low enrollment, low academic performance or financial concerns.