RI Charter Schools See Huge Increase in Applications

Saturday, March 02, 2013

GoLocalProv News Team

Though there were less than 800 spots available, more than 7,900 parents sent in applications to send their children to an RI public charter school next year.

Rhode Island’s public charter schools have seen a large increase in interest from parents deciding where their children should be educated, so much so that a total of 7,900 applications were sent in for the less than 800 openings available leading up to this year’s so-called “lottery day.”

That’s an increase of more than 20 percent from last year and, according to Stephen A. Nardelli, executive director of the Rhode Island League of Charter Schools, it says a lot about the current state of public education in Rhode Island.

“Lottery day is a happy day for some families, but also a disappointing day for many families who would like more school choices to be available,” Nardelli said. “The growing, unmet demand for charter public schools highlights the need and value of public school choice options in our state.”

Lottery day is a term used to describe the state-imposed date of March 1 that charter public schools had to determine their student bodies for the upcoming school year. By law, each charter public school is required to conduct a blind lottery when the number of applicants exceeds the number of available spaces.

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Comments:

John LeMasters

5:33pm on Sunday, March 03, 2013

Since all these charter schools get all the great publicity and fanfare. Why don't we do a blind lottery incorporating all students regardless if mom/dad/guardian applied or not?

Ed Jucation

1:13pm on Monday, March 04, 2013

Because the charter schools do not want the bottom of the barrel..they only want motivated students who have involved parents. By charters scooping up the cream of the crop, the other public schools with have to deal with an increasing percentage of unmotivated and disruptive students. This is why there is a lenghty application process and required parental involvement. If public schools could choose which students they were to teach then there would be no need for charters.

Kati Loreen

8:05pm on Monday, March 04, 2013

This should allow teachers to have smaller class sizes since enrollments keep dropping and thus be more able to handle "unmotivated" students. Yes? No? Maybe?

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