I posted earlier today about Chris Christie’s poison pill for Newark, having approved in advance of his retirement an additional 7,000 charter spaces on the basis of a long waiting list.
Rutgers Professor Julia Sass Rubin explains that the current charter schools have openings, and the wait list is a myth:
If current patterns hold, many of the Newark charter school seats approved by Governor Christie are unlikely to be filled by Newark residents because there appears to be an oversupply of charter seats for the level of demand in Newark.
Over the last four years, Newark residents have filled only about 80% of the approved seats in Newark charter schools. This may have been a factor in the Christie Administration’s decision to close several Newark charter schools last year, as doing so would create more demand for the remaining charter schools.
This pattern of weak demand for charter schools is also seen in other New Jersey cities with large charter enrollments.
The data showing a gap between supply and demand throws into question the claims of a 35,000 student waitlist that the NJ charter industry has used to push back against any slow down in approvals. The 35,000 figure is self-reported and unverified. It is created by the charter school trade association. If a student’s family applies to 10 charter schools, the waitlist would count her as ten students. Analysis of specific individual charter waitlists also confirms that they may include students who have moved away or who applied in prior years and are no longer interested.
Mark Weber and I will be releasing a second charter school research report next month that goes into greater detail on these and related issues.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
80% out of what? 25 pupils per class? So this comes to about 20 pupils? Isn’t this a good thing – reducing class size? Should not they be awarded instead?
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I am so glad this is being addressed in an academic setting.
If a charter school has 800 applicants, they claim a “wait list of 700” right after the lottery picks 100 names. But if –after offering those 100 students seats — that school has to churn through another 300 students on that wait list to fill those 100 seats, it is very likely that most of the remaining 400 would also turn down their seats. You can’t churn through 400 applications to fill 100 seats because 300 of the first 400 students offered seats turned you down, and still claim that every one of the 400 students who are remaining on the waitlist actually want your school.
It would be good to audit which student with the highest wait list number was admitted. And also interview a few families of students with a slightly lower wait list number to make sure their parents were properly notified of the seat and there was no funny business offering it to a favored student with a higher wait list number that the charter wanted.
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Charter school bogus “long wait list” claims are a staple in the “reform” world. And to be completely fair — I was on the board of the co-op preschool my kids attended. In a co-op, the parent members do everything, including handling enrollment. We would think we had a good solid wait list, and then when we had an opening, would discover that it was actually illusory — almost everyone on it had found a spot elsewhere, or moved, or made some other arrangement. So even if you’re totally, scrupulously honest, the wait list is likely to be an illusion.
And even in a perfectly honest, scrupulous world, dealing with the wait list is crazy. How long do you give No. 1 to return your call before you call No. 2 and then No. 3? What if No. 10 has been letting you know they’re still interested and you really, really need to fill the spot — are you really going to do the rigmarole of offering it to Nos. 1-9 first? And is there any legal obligation to contact them in numerical order, or even keep a numerical list, to begin with?
Basically, you can’t go wrong by assuming that all charter school “long wait list” claims are complete BS.
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