Twenty years ago, charter schools were a novel idea in most communities. States began passing laws that allowed groups of motivated individuals to create innovative public schools outside of the traditional system. It took some time for parents and students to get to know these new and unique public schools. Now, however, charter schools are a growing, thriving, and integral part of more and more communities. The National Alliance’s most recent report on enrollment share shows that we now have seven major urban school districts with more than one-third of their students attending charter schools. In three of these – Detroit, Mich., Washington, D.C., and Flint, Mich. – about half of all public school students attend a charter school. For school districts that have struggled to “fix” their schools for decades, parents are clearly taking advantage of the opportunity to choose charters instead.
Not only are there more districts with a large charter enrollment share, there are also 30 districts from 19 different states that have more than 10,000 students in charter schools. In these districts, charter schools and their students are simply part of the education landscape. And 23 of those districts with the largest number of charter school students grew by more than 10 percent in just the last year. These districts show that the demand for charters gets stronger as they become more prevalent. At the National Alliance, we collect data on student enrollment and demographics for every charter school in the US. Our database allows us to track trends in enrollment, school openings and closings, and the unmet demand that still exists in the form of students being on wait lists instead of in the charter of their choice. Our latest report on enrollment share is the ninth in the series and like the previous editions, demonstrates that the charter school movement continues to grow.
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