Over the past years, Charter schools has gone through its ups and downs. There are different sides to charter schools. Like every other schools, charter schools have its pros and cons. Charter schools are independent schools that receives government funding. Unlike public schools, they operate privately.
Lastly, charter schools are publicly funded independent schools established by a community group under the terms of a charter with a local authority. The term charter means a written grant by a country’s legislative or sovereign power, by which an institution is created
The public schools sector seen to be losing its grip on education. Charter schools are potentially establishing roots to replace traditional public schools. Charter schools, funded by public funds, were to be the alternative of private schools without the financial burden experienced by parents. Tracing the development and growth of charter schools, the concept that charter schools would improve all schools can be traced back to Milton Friedman, the Nobel-winning economist.
Charter schooling is an intriguing phenomenon in education that has sprouted up in the last two and half decades. Charter schools are schools that receive public funding to educate students based on a management contract or charter under which a school operates. Charter schools are able to get exemptions from rules that potentially burden traditional public schools. Traditional public school often have mandated regulations regarding curriculum, staffing, and resource allocation that oftentimes do not apply to charter schools. A charter school is started by parents, teachers, or community groups who make an agreement under a charter with a local or national authority to provide education to students.
Consequently, attending public funded school has become their inexpensive choice. Public school and charter school both receive public funding. Public schools are open for any child, operated by a unified school district with a same set of the education standards. With a standardized system for students with different talents, are they really able to provide quality education? In contrast, Charter schools
Traditional public schools are generally much bigger than charter schools, giving them the ability to enroll more students and incorporate a variety of extracurricular activities. According to Peterson (2017) “Charter schools are funded by governments, but operate independently. This means that charter schools must persuade parents to select them instead of a neighborhood district school” (p.1). By having to recruit students for enrollment, charter schools target the most motivated students. Since charter schools are smaller than traditional public schools, they tend to run out of seating fast, therefore they enroll their students using a lottery.
School choice is the idea that parents should be able to choose which school they want to send their children to, whether they enroll them to private, charter, parochial or virtual schools, or just decide to homeschool them. “Charter schools are our best hope for meaningful change in education. Yet, many parents are leery of charter schools or confused by them.” (“Should all Schools”) Some politicians and teachers believe that school choice takes away money from them since they do use tax dollars.
Schools that have been labeled as low preforming schools and do not wish to undergo staff reconstruction, have the option of becoming a charter school. As the dictionary puts is, charter schools are “a publicly funded independent school established by ‘teachers, parents, or community groups under the terms of a charter with the local or national authority.” In order to get into a charter school, applying students must pass a test. Because students must pass a test to get into the school the school will only be accepting the best of the students therefor it will not have to worry about low test scores as only the smartest children will be attending. The problem with charter school is, while yes there students are thriving, there test scores
There are two main articles, “School Vouchers Are a Good Alternative to Public Schools” and “Tax Credits for School Choice Do Not Benefit Taxpayers and Students” that have opposing views, that argue on whether school vouchers are beneficial or not. Both articles are convincing in their own way. Though, both are convincing the truth is when one gathers enough information on the topic one would come to realize in the long run, school vouchers are only benefiting a small group in a world of millions of students who need education. When private schools and when charter schools come into play, they get funding that is initially for the public schools of a county, it starts to ruin the public school system. The public school system relies solely on the money of taxpayers with a rare and occasional donation.
One of the schools I am highly interested in working is Horizon Science Academy in Dayton Downtown. Horizon school is a public charter school serving 224 students from Kindergarten through eighth grades managing by Concept Schools. Concept Schools is knowing as a nonprofit charter management organization which provides a high-quality, STEM and college-preparatory education for every student, as well as offering exceptional programs and comprehensive services to be successful in education. HSA opened a new elementary school in 2011 in Dayton Downtown, 121 S Monmouth St, Dayton, OH 45403.
Charter Schools have both positive and negative effects on education. Even though they are like public schools, they have different methods and guides when it comes to running a school and educating their students. These schools are usually independently managed or have a contract with the state which allows them to have fewer rules and regulations than traditional public schools. Even though charter schools benefit students in some ways, there are critics whom believe they offer a poorly educating system to students. In the other hand, some supporters believe that charter schools can operate more efficiently by removing existing regulations that public schools follow.
“Evaluation of all types of schools, charter and others, could be improved both by accounting for the difficulty of educating particular groups of students before interpreting test scores and by focusing on student gains over time, not their level of achievement in any particular year” (EPI). Everyone wants to know how charter schools are doing. There is a mass of research about how charter school students perform on tests, however the results can be questioned. The Charter School Achievement Consensus Panel states “It is impossible to observe the same students simultaneously in both charter schools and the schools they would have attended had charter schools not have been available” (Charter Achievement). There are three main reasons for the lack of evidence on the relationships between lotteries and equity.
Charter Schools are publicly funded independent private schools established by teachers, parents, or community groups, under the terms of a charter with a local or national authority. Charter Schools are public schools of choice, meaning that families chose them for their kids. Also teachers who work at a charter school usually fall under more flexible certification requirements than other public school teachers. Charter schools are often similar to magnet schools they often offer special programs such as Math, Engineering, and Environmental science. Also if The Charter school you are trying to enroll in gets too popular they will sometimes use a lottery system which will fill in the vacancies.
When it comes down to differences between charter and public schools, there isn’t much of a difference. In fact, Ravitch in her essay criticizes public education defectors for blindly reading studies that public school education leaves a large majority of students not on grade level. The National Assessment of Educational Progress shows where students rank based on 3 levels of achievement: advanced, proficient, and basic. Ravitch explains that “any student below proficient is assumed as below grade level”. Again, the disagreement between the validity of effectiveness seems to be an issue of defining the facts for the two former
In Charter schools they have very limited learning choices, the main reason is that they cannot afford many learning subjects. Most of the time it is hard to motivate students to learn about something they are interested in, but that is not the case with online schools. In charter and public schools in the first place they don't have access to as much education as online schools. In the schools they don't have as many learning choices because they just can't meet the requirements for successfully teaching that class. For example it is expensive to get good teacher for a really good class, and depending on the class you have to buy different supplies for it and that can be even more expensive.
