The past two decades have marked tremendous growth in the number of public schools that are privately operated and, in a growing number of cases, also privately owned. Known as education management organizations (EMOs), these are private companies or organizations that are rapidly expanding their market shares of the public education sector, particularly public charter schools.

The release of the Fifteenth Edition of the Profiles of For-Profit and Nonprofit Education Management Organizations comes after a more than seven-year lapse since the fourteenth edition was released. As the evidence underlines, between the 14th and 15th Edition of this report, there has been steady growth across for-profit EMOs, and a much more expansive growth by private nonprofit EMOs.