The latest official report on the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship places enrollment this fall at 48,938 students – a level that ranks the program among the nation’s top 100 largest school districts.

The scholarship is not a district, of course; it serves students in 1,298 different private schools across the state. The students are not economically diverse, either; the scholarship is only for those who qualify for free or reduced-price lunch and the average income last year was only 12 percent above poverty.

So these enrollment numbers speak only to parental interest, and the trend is strong. Enrollment has quadrupled in eight years, doubled in the past four. For the third consecutive year, the nonprofit that oversees the scholarship, Step Up For Students, was forced to close applications and place parents on a waiting list. Even with an increase of roughly 10,000 students this year, the organization has more than 11,000 who have signed up to be notified of more scholarships. In a year in which traditional public school enrollment is forecast to increase by only 1.2 percent, the scholarship program likely will grow by 25 percent.

Not surprisingly, some of the largest growth is coming in urban districts, with Miami-Dade adding nearly 2,500 more students and Orlando/Orange County adding close to 1,000. For the number crunchers, here is a spreadsheet of enrollment by district for the past eight years.

Students at Franklin Middle School in Tampa.

Vouchers need more accountability. So say David R. Colburn, director of the Askew Institute at the University of Florida, and Brian Dassler, chief academic officer for the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts, in this exclusive op-ed for the Tampa Bay Times. Response here from the Heartland Institute, which says parental satisfaction is “a more effective form of accountability than extending mindless bureaucratic oversight to the private sector.”

New charter school to focus on “Latin and logic.” Tampa Bay Times story here. The applicant for the school is Anne Corcoran, the wife of state Rep. Richard Corcoran. He’s a future House speaker and a strong proponent of private school choice, too.

Threats to single-gender learning options. U.S. Sens. Kay Bailey Hutchison and Barbara Mikulski are considered to be on opposite ends of the political spectrum, but in this op-ed for the Wall Street Journal they unite in defense of single-gender options in public schools. (They single out Florida as one of the states where such options have been under legal fire.) It’s worth noting that in our own backyard, old lines of division have also faded over this issue. Last year, John Kirtley, who chairs Step Up For Students, donated $100,000 to the Hillsborough County School District to support single-gender academies at two public middle schools. The Walton Family Foundation kicked in another $100,000.

More on race-based achievement goals. The New York Times writes today about the state Board of Education’s decision last week to set different academic achievement targets for black, white, Hispanic and other subgroups. The targets incorporate steeper rates of improvement for groups with lower proficiency rates, but they have nonetheless caused a ruckus. The parents group Fund Education Now weighs in. So does Naples Daily News columnist Brent Batten, who hears from Collier County education officials that this is “much ado about nothing.”