Florida parents responded after state Rep. Richard Corcoran proposed raising the cap on the state’s corporate tax credit scholarship program. In fact, the demand was so great that Step Up for Students, the organization which manages Florida’s program, closed applications for 2012-13 because it had so many more families requesting support than available spots.

According to the Tampa Bay Times, “The program has approved 50,134 students already for the new school year, with thousands more in the pipeline, policy vice president Jon East told the Gradebook. More than 87,000 families started applications this year, compared to 69,000 a year ago.”

Looking at the last school year, the Florida Department of Education reported that 40,248 low-income studentsused the program. That’s an increase from 10,549 in 2004-05. The ethnic breakdown of the students last year was 25 percent white, 35 percent black, 34 percent Hispanic, and 6 percent others.

You can see the increase in demand for the program in the graph below.

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