Charter Schools vs Public Schools

Charter schools are an alternative and very creative way to educate kids in these stirring times. Chartering in education is a worldwide movement that started in 1988 when Ray Budge, a professor at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, called for a reform for public education. He was soon followed by Albert Shanker president of the American Federation of Teachers. Originally a charter school was a legally and financially autonomous public school respecting three characteristics: no tuition, no religious affiliation and no selective student admissions. They are supposed to operate more like a private business, free from local laws and states’ or districts’ regulation and accountable for student outcomes instead of processes or inputs.

There are two important principles behind any charter school: autonomy and accountability for student achievement. Therefore, they also have three main advantages over traditional public schools: creative school culture instead of bureaucratic or time consuming procedures, centered in academic results rather than political trends, and a more committed group of teachers focused on performance in place of their own wellbeing.

Autonomy is crucial in order to create an alternative school culture. It has been well known that many public schools tend to follow a regular annual pattern that become pointless and meaningless. Teachers have to go through long and boring procedures to show performance and get better wages. A regular charter school guarantees a balanced school culture that meets student’s contextual needs by having more control and flexibility about work rules and school duty.

According to the Center of Education Reform, to date 12.5 percent of the over 5000 charter schools founded in the United States have closed for reasons including mainly academic, financial, and managerial problems and, occasionally, consolidation or district interference. This means that many charter schools have been closed because they didn’t accomplished what they were intended to: center all the efforts in encouraging student achievement. No public school has ever been closed on an academic or financial basis.

There are different status of rules and structures in charter schools mostly because they depend on state authorizing legislation, thus they differ from state to state. To start, a charter school has to be authorized to function once it has received a charter, a statutorily defined operation contract detailing the school's mission, program, goals, students served, methods of assessment, and ways to measure success. The length of time for which charters are granted varies, but most are granted for 3 to 5 years. Charter schools are held accountable to their sponsor such as a local school board, state education agency, university, or other entity, to produce positive academic results and adhere to the charter contract. Once a school has reached its goals in the established time, a new contract is signed for a longer period.

A charter school atmosphere is normally warm and intellectually challenging. Most of them are small compared to traditional public schools and also many of them are newly founded. These characteristics are an excellent opportunity to try out new academic approaches, curricula, administrative structure and student assessment measures. Creativity is well seen among charter school faculties. This is fresh air compared to the rigid bureaucratic procedures.

The teachers unions are against a large overhaul of American education system and they are known for opposing any reform. Compared to other developed countries, the United States has the worst educational quality per dollar spent on schools, ranking 18^th in reading and 28^th in mathematics. Millions of American children are being let down by dysfunctional schools, however efforts for education reform are invariably stopped by powerful union interests. If we take a look to the facts that unions’ have been working on, like adversarial relationship between teachers and administratives, their refusal to merit pay, etc. we have to ask what is in the core of unions’ interests their students academic achievement or their own interests?. Besides, there are many issues that the unions get involved in which have no direct relationship to the quality of teaching. All of these problems have made charter schools more attractive to many Americans. It is a good and successful way to avoid political and bureaucratic obstacles and produce outstanding results.

Many teachers choose to work in a charter school because these schools help them avoid the disappointment of constant bureaucracy. Instead of constantly jumping through procedural requirements, charter school leaders can focus on setting and reaching high academic standards for their students. In addition to hiring the same certified teachers as traditional public schools, charter schools can hire skilled individuals that often have significant professional experience in their subject area. This gives charter education a taste of real-world experience. A normal charter school would have a balanced combination of a modern teaching-learning methodology, such as the Montessori Method, a clear focus on a specific subject, such as math, art or music, a theme-based curriculum, such as environmental sustainability or language immersion, a specific target population, such as "at-risk" students  and personnel policies or teacher payment strategies, such as merit based pay.

These are the major advantages of charter schools but there are some critics who have summarized their weaknesses.  A large amount of field research on charter schools is being divulged and the conclusions are yet to be discussed.