Charters' District Enrollment Shares Rising, Report Finds

School districts in Las Vegas, Tampa, Fla., and Dallas oversaw some of the biggest growth rates in charter school enrollment over the past year, although nationwide, New Orleans public schools still have the highest “market share” of student enrollment in charters, according to a recent report from a national charter school advocacy group.

In the 2012 report from the Washington-based National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, “A Growing Movement: America’s Largest Charter School Communities,” the group also reported that, for the first time, more than 100 districts—it lists 110—have at least 10 percent of their students enrolled in charters. Nationwide, according to the report, over 2 million students, or nearly 5 percent of total public school enrollment, are in charter schools. The report, published Nov. 14, is the seventh time NAPCS has studied charter school enrollment in districts on a nationwide basis.

There was a lot of turnover among the districts with the highest growth rate of charter students, compared with the NAPCS report from 2011 report on charter growth. Only three of the highest-charter-growth districts (Los Angeles Unified, New York City, and Memphis, Tenn.) made the list for both the 2010-11 and 2011-12 school years. Both lists drew from the 50 districts with the...