Charter Schools Vs Public Schools

For a long time, choices for education have been sending children to public school or paying to send them to private school. Within the past two decades, a new alternative has emerged. Charter schools have been gaining traction in the United States. Charter schools are essentially a blending of the two worlds. They receive government funding based on enrollment, but they aren’t necessarily open to all students either. Margaret Spellings was the U.S Secretary of Education when she wrote “Charter Schools Improve Education” favoring charter schools. Diane Ravitch served as a former Assistant Secretary of Education and was a research professor of Education at New York University when she wrote “The Success of Charter Schools is a Myth” dismissing

Spellings tells of classrooms that customize learning and classroom values in a charter school environment. She writes that charter schools provide quality and innovation. Ravitch found that as far as effectiveness goes, charter schools were ranked only 17% higher than a traditional public school. She further states that 46% of charter schools were ranked the same as a traditional public school. Ravitch goes even further stating that ‘there are excellent charters just as there are excellent public schools”. 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

Ravitch, however, paints a different picture by showing how exclusive these charter schools are. Often, several hundred students compete and then rely on luck to land a spot into these prestigious charter schools. These charter schools are unlike public schools in the fact that they get to effectively pick and choose which students they receive. Furthermore, Ravitch draws attention to the fact that because charters must have higher scores to maintain government funding often times charter school administration will turn terminate enrollment for students that are underperforming just before test day. Ravitch basically states that while charters claim to be so welcoming, they do so only if you are already on track to meet their goals. As Ravitch states, “Public education is one of the cornerstones of American democracy. The public schools must accept everyone who appears at their doors, no matter their race, language, economic status, or disability.” This statement alone shows how she values equality and sees charter schools as not being as equal as once