Kansas City, Mo ? Nearly one in five public school students living in the Kansas City school district boundaries now attends charter schools that receive state funding but are freed from many rules and regulations.

The growing numbers of parents choosing to send their students to the new breed of schools gives Kansas City one of the highest ratios of charter school enrollment in the country, according to the Center for Education Reform, a Washington organization that advocates for charter schools.

“Charter school enrollment is going up in places that have had a particularly big problem with maintaining high quality public schools,” said Jeanne Allen, the organization’s president. “It’s no secret that Kansas City has had its share of troubles in the last 20 years, and particularly in the last 10.”

Enrollment has grown steadily since the first charter schools in the state opened in 1999, with about one in eight public school students in Kansas City attending.

Though test scores fail to show that students enrolled in the city’s charter schools perform better than public school students, 6,685 students were enrolled in them on the last Wednesday of September this year. The district reported 27,239 kindergarten through 12th-grade students, not counting charter students.

The credit for part of the growth goes to the increase in the number of charter schools, from 15 to 18 since 1999, and the addition of grade levels at some schools.