For the fourth consecutive year, NAPCS has released the most comprehensive set of charter school data publicly available. The Public Charter School Dashboard contains statistics and indicators about the growth and quality of public charter schools at the national, state, district, and school levels. Notably, the Dashboard hosts detailed information on every charter school in operation across the country, including enrollment, student demographics, and school achievement data. The updated Dashboard now includes data for the 2011-2012 academic year.
Here are some facts from the updated Dashboard:
Over 2.0 million students attended public charter schools in the 2011-2012 academic year, representing a 12.6 percent growth from the prior school year.
As we reported last week, 610,000 students were placed on waiting lists to attend public charter schools before the beginning of the 2011-2012 school year.
538 new public charter schools opened for the 2011-2012 school year.
There are now 5,611 public charter schools across the country, representing growth of 7.0 percent from the prior school year.
The average public charter school has been open for 7.4 years. 25.5 percent of charter schools have been open for less than three years.
90 percent of public charter schools are start-ups.
As of the 2010-2011 school year, 67.7 percent of public charter schools were independent or freestanding (e.g., not operated by a management organization), while 20.0 percent were run by non-profit management organizations and 12.3 percent were run by for-profit management organizations.
There is a lot of data to explore. If you want to learn more about how to make use of the data in the Dashboard, come to our session on Wednesday.
