Cassidy, 2013
When Minnesota passed the nation’s first law permitting charter schools, in 1991, no one could have predicted that more than six thousand such schools would be operating 22 years later. Nor could anyone have known that 18 cities would have at least 20% of their students enrolled in charters.
Today, charter schools are educating just under 5% of public school children in the U.S., according to the National Alliance of Public Charter Schools (www.napcs.org). But don’t let that 5% figure fool you: Demand for charters is exploding, even as many public school districts are closing schools. In Massachusetts alone, 45,000 children are on waiting lists to get into charters, according to the Massachusetts Charter Public School Association (www.masscharterschools.org).