Anybody who thinks charter schools are plateauing or reaching some sort of natural limit had better think again.??The Texas Public Policy Foundation has just released the number of young Texans who were on waiting lists for charter schools in that state during the last school year (2008-9)--and it's north of 40,000, more than twice as many as the year before. This in a state with about 130,000 youngsters currently enrolled in charters. In other words, current demand in Texas would fill eighty more schools of 500 students each.??The state should make that happen--provided, of course, that they're all great schools!??If the??Texas pattern holds nationally, it would also mean that about half a million boys and girls wanted to attend charters last year but could not do so due to enrollment constraints.
-Chester E. Finn, Jr.
