“Charter schools are innovative and independent public schools run by an entity other than its authorizer. These schools are produced by parents, organizations, or community groups to fill an educational need not otherwise offered by traditional schools.”Charter Schools: The Ultimate Handbook for Parents, by Karin Piper
Charter schools are tuition free public schools.
Charter schools are free from many regulations which apply to non-charter public schools. Charters are designed to self govern. This gives charter schools the independence to explore different education tools and techniques.
In exchange for this freedom charter schools are held directly accountable for student achievement and fiscal responsibility with public funds.
If a charter school is not proven academically effective for its students or is financially unsound, the charter school closes.
Charter schools are intended to be unique of its traditional public school counterpart. That’s just the whole point—isn’t it? If offering a public school option, creating more of the same would simply defy the purpose. Why bother with education reform if it is not with the goal of improving the offering that already exists?
Some charter schools are theme based, while others may be designed with a specific academic goal in mind. However, all charter schools have a mission and answer to its authorizer about fulfilling its goals.
The charter school concept has been said to be experimental. It once was, but more than a decade-and-a-half after the first charter school law was passed in Minnesota this education model is hardly stuck in version 1.0.
There are more than 1.3 million children enrolled in nearly 4,700 charter schools across the United States, with hundreds of thousands of hopeful children on the waitlists for enrollment.
Charter schools are today embraced with bipartisan political support and are increasingly popular with families.
Welcome to the Education 101: Charter Schools Edition. Over the course of the next couple of months you will find several articles throughout the Examiner which answers some of the frequently asked questions about charter schools. If you wish to receive these editorials plus other commentaries from the Charter Schools Examiner directly to your email, please subscribe for free above. Here is a list of additional Examiners who write about charter schools:
Comments
If more people understood what these schools are about, we would have many more. While there are some poorly performing schools that close down, overall they offer an excellent option for parents and students. These schools lower our taxes and improve our children's education.
My children are attending a charter school, and they had made little progress, my son is a 7th grader and I his academic’s level is too low. The school is focusing more in the culture’s aspect rather than the academic’s.
Leaving in a multicultural city is very difficult, because our children’s progress in school is always base on the parent’s background and it wrong. When more than 50% of the students are failing ELA there is something wrong with the school’s system not the parents.
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