Mid-April marks the beginning of the charter school lottery
season, and with it, news reports of staggering numbers of applications to
schools with limited slots. Already, the Post reported
that 3,800 students applied for 588 spots in the Achievement First charter
schools. In order to review the results for past lotteries, I submitted a Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) request to
the State Education department, who provided us with the Basic Education Data System
(BEDS) data that all charters file with the state. I found that applications to
charter schools have increased by 50% since 2007, with over 50,000 applications submitted last year. By comparison, enrollment in charters has only
increased by 40% to just shy of 40,000 students last year. The chances of getting admitted to a charter school in New
York City have declined from an average acceptance rate of 36% in 2008-2009 to
a rate of 28% in 2009-2010. A full spreadsheet of the admissions data, with statistics
for individual schools, is available here.

To be clear, these numbers only tell part of the story. They
do not, for instance, take into account double counting—i.e. the fact that many
parents apply to multiple lotteries.  Nor
do they offer detailed information about where these applicants live, so it is hard
to say if charters get many applicants from far away districts or from close to
the school. In fact, charter operators are instructed NOT to list the district
numbers of their students on the BEDS form, despite the fact that the
information could be easily collected.
Despite the drawbacks, this data does offer insights into
where applications are the most numerous—and how the number of applications
correlates to things like age of the school and its Progress Report score. The 11
schools that had admissions percentages of less than 10% last year were*:

1. Bronx Charter School for Better Learning
2. Bronx Charter School for Children
3. Bronx Charter School for Excellence
4. Community Partnership Charter School
5. Community Roots Charter School
6. Future Leaders Institute Charter School
7. Grand Concourse Academy Charter School
8. Icahn Charter School 1
9. Merrick Academy/Queens Public Charter School
10. Renaissance Charter School
11. The UFT Charter School

I found that schools that have been in operation longer generally
have lower admissions percentages—and this is a trend that has increased in
recent years. Schools such as the Sisulu-Walker Charter School, Renaissance
Charter School, and Grand Concourse Academy, all of whom have been open since
at least 2004, have had admissions percentages below 15% for the past three
years. There appears to be no correlation between Progress Report scores and admission
numbers in the following year. Indeed, out of the 19 new charter schools opened
in 2009-2010 (for which no scores yet exist) 15 had admissions percentages of
less than 50%.

I also looked at admissions to charter schools based on
neighborhood. I focused on Central Brooklyn, Harlem, and the South Bronx, as
they are the areas that have the most charter schools. It has actually gotten
easier to be admitted to a charter school in the South Bronx, where
approximately 1 in 3 applicants is offered a spot. In Harlem, however, the
chances of admittance have plummeted: in 2007-2008, the rate was 40%. Last
year, it was 18%.

In future posts, I will be looking at the BEDS data related
to suspensions, class size, and pupil retention. As always, I welcome comments
and suggestions for ways to improve my calculations.

*I am leaving out the four Harlem Success Academy schools
that were open in 2009-2010 because it is unclear whether the numbers refer to
each individual school or all four schools. I will update when I have better
information.