The national debate over charter schooling has become increasingly heated in 2016, driven by polarized narratives about the students charters typically serve. Opponents argue charters cream-skim more advantaged students, while proponents hold they primarily serve historically disadvantaged students. National evidence on charter student selectivity has not kept pace with these arguments. Rigorous comparisons of charter and traditional public schools (TPSs) have limited scope and generalizability, while oversimplified national comparisons are often misleading. This essay presents a novel method for national comparisons of charter schools' student poverty, special education, limited English proficient (LEP) composition and discipline rates, to those of their nearest five TPS neighbors. Findings show that charters' student compositions differ from those in neighboring TPSs, but not in uniform ways.