Texas Charter Schools

Texas open-enrollment charter schools, also called state-authorized charters, are tuition-free public schools authorized by the state rather than a local district. Each charter holder is its own local education agency, may run many campuses, and enrolls from a defined geographic boundary without regard to attendance zones. Some run online or hybrid programs.

Tuition: $0 – Completely FREE. State Foundation School Program funding follows the student to the charter.

Authorization: Texas Education Code Chapter 12, Subchapter D. State law has capped the number of charter operators at 305 since 2019, but does not limit how many campuses each one may run.

Oversight: The Texas Education Agency oversees charters. The commissioner grants them and the State Board of Education may veto within 90 days. Charters answer to performance frameworks, strict non-renewal standards, and a three strikes mandatory-closure rule for poor academic or financial performance.

Who Can Attend: Any student eligible for Texas public school who lives within the charter’s approved geographic boundary.

Admission Process:

• Submit the common admission application to each charter, by its own deadline
• If applications exceed seats, the school must either hold a lottery or fill seats in the order applications arrived. The first-come option is allowed only if the school published notice of the application opportunity, stating the deadline, in a newspaper of general circulation at least seven days beforehand
• A charter may admit children of its own employees regardless of where they live
• Municipality-authorized charters may admit a small percentage of municipal employees’ children ahead of the lottery

Application Timing: Set school by school. There is no statewide window. Charter holders must post enrollment, capacity and waitlist data on the TEA website by March 15 each year, where you can check a campus’s capacity and waitlist before applying.

Program Scale: In 2025-26, 182 charter schools ran 993 campuses enrolling 446,633 students, about 8.2% of Texas public school enrollment. Nearly 70% were economically disadvantaged and 12.1% received special education services.

Waitlists: TEA’s separate 2025 waitlist collection, covering a slightly different set of charters, counted 69,853 individual students waiting, with 550 of 935 campuses reporting a list. It put capacity at 576,388 against 442,840 enrolled, leaving 133,548 unused seats. The longest waitlists were Harmony Public Schools (22,863) and KIPP Texas (8,021).

Special Education: Charters are public schools subject to IDEA and state special education law. They are exempt from many state regulations that bind traditional districts, but not from academic and financial accountability.

Transportation: Practice varies by charter holder and is not covered in the TEA charter guidance reviewed, so ask each school before you enroll.

Important Note: Enrolling in a charter and being counted in its attendance ends participation in a Texas Education Freedom Account. A charter may still sell individual services to a child it does not enroll.

Related Option: District-authorized charter campuses and university charters are a separate route with their own rules.

Finding a School:

• TEA Charter Locator Map
• TEA Charter School Reports, for waitlist and performance data