A charter school is a publicly funded school that must have an open enrollment policy. They have to abide with state testing and federal accountability programs, but teachers have the freedom of teaching however they want. Charter Schools are created by parents and local communities and not by the government.
Our country was created on the basis of freedom. I am by no means saying that Charter Schools on a whole are better than public schools, but I believe that we should welcome them as another form of education. Right now the public school system is a one size fits all solution. Every child is unique and the current system might not use the correct methodology that is needed for every child to reach their full potential. Some children might benefit from a little different approach.
Right now people have to go to the public school in their district even if the school is not doing all that well academically or if the building is in very bad condition. The only choice parents have is a private school. But these can be very costly for many parents. But luckily charter schools can offer a third option. One can go to any Charter school and is not bound to where they live. Unlike private schools, Charters are not allowed to ask for tuition. Instead, they get their money from the state and from wealthy private donors.
However it is not all rosy. In fact the Center for Research on Education Outcomes (CREDO) did a study that said that 17% of the Charter schools perform better then regular public schools, 37% of the time they perform poorer and the rest of the time they are about the same. This will cause many people to believe that we need to drastically reduce the number of charter schools. I do believe that the number of struggling charter schools is far too high. But there are many schools that are doing very well and we should in no way make any cuts that will hurt the success of those charter schools. Instead,I believe that the government should be proactive in first warning, and if necessary, closing down charter schools that fail to make or exceed testing and other standards.
Capitalism produces winners and losers. Because of this we are always going to have winning and losing schools when it comes to charters. But this does not mean that we have to be afraid of expanding charter schools. We should create more charter schools, because the more people that are out there trying to develop new techniques, and new ways in teaching, the more innovative and smarter we will become
But children are not lab rats, and we cannot do experiments on them that will end up hurting the children. So the government must be proactive in following up with these charter schools. If their test scores are falling behind that of the traditional public schools in the area, then we have to let them know that they have to fix it and give them a limited time to do that. If they still cannot meet the requirements then we have to close them down and have the children go to the public school in their district.
Also let’s hope that school choice will work like most things in the economy. If the parents find out it is not as good as their local public school, then I would assume that they would take their children out of that school.
I feel that we should try to constantly improve our public school system by looking at our most successful charter schools and incorporating some of what they are doing into our public schools.
Matthew Lindeman
Viewpoints Contributor