A recent report by a charter school advocacy group found there are more than 24,000 students on charter school waiting lists in Miami-Dade County.

The numbers are based on information kept by the Florida Department of Education, which asks charter schools the number of applications they receive, the number of students they accept and the number of children on their waiting lists. The third number is often, but not always, the difference between the first two.

See the full spreadsheet of statewide waiting list data here.

There are several caveats with these numbers. For one thing, they are reported by individual schools, so they may include duplicates. If one student tried to get into three different schools, but didn't win any lotteries, that student might appear on three different waiting lists.
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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. (more…)