Miami-Dade County is home to one of the largest and fastest-growing charter school sectors of any school district in the country, and yet, it still may have more room to grow, a new report suggests.
The National Alliance for Public Schools is marking National Charter Schools Week with its latest breakdown of swelling charter school waiting lists in large urban school districts around the country.
The exact accounting of parent demand for charter schools is always fraught with pitfalls, but as others have noted, it’s hard not to conclude that demand for educational options is substantial.
This year, 128 Miami-Dade charter schools enroll more than 55,000 students, according to fall enrollment survey data from the Florida Department of Education. That places the district’s charter sector in the same league as New York and Chicago.
Yet the report, citing Department of Education data, says waiting lists in Miami-Dade County numbered a combined 24,500 students.
It’s worth noting that Miami-Dade appears to be home to one of Florida’s highest-quality charter school sectors.
While there is wide variation in charter school performance among districts around the state, a study of urban charter schools released earlier this year found Miami is one of the urban areas where charters as a whole have outperformed district schools in both reading and math.
It’s also worth noting that Miami-Dade is a place where district officials have taken it upon themselves to improve and diversify their own offerings to attract students.
See the whole report here. The charter alliance’s president, Nina Rees, discussed the report with the Wall Street Journal here. See more from Education Week‘s Charters & Choice blog here.
