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Charter Schools

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The American educational system used to be the model for educational systems around the world. For the past 20 years America has declined and is now ranked #18 out of 38 developed countries in the world in education(14). Reformers have searched far and wide for a way to fix the educational system. One debatable answer to the problem could be charter schools. A charter school is a public school that operates independently of the district board of education. In order for a charter school to exist, a contract must be written. It can be written by anyone, for example: educators, parents, community leaders, entrepreneurs. The contract explains what the charter school’s goals will be and applicable accountability measures. After the charter is written …show more content…
A small group of teachers were given contracts called charters in order to explore new educational techniques. These charters were only given to individual teachers at first and weren’t meant to be used on a larger scale. That is, until Albert Shanker—former president of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT)—believed that it would be beneficial to charter an entire school instead of individual teachers. By 2003 a total of 40 state, including Puerto Rico, and the District of Columbia, have passed laws that allowed for the creation of charter schools. The growth of charter schools has sparked controversy amongst educators and government officials alike. In theory, charter schools have the potential to be very effective. Unfortunately, even though charter schools are meant to turn around the American educational system, there is evidence to suggest they may be harming the system more than helping …show more content…
The CREDO study done by Stanford University backs up the claim made by Minnesota Law School. The study showed that in 16 states including the District of Columbia charter schools performed at the same rate as traditional public schools. Only 17% of charter schools performed better than their traditional school counterparts. A total 37% of charters, performed worse than traditional public schools. The goal of charter schools is to better the learning environment for students, but it seems that it may be making the learning situation worse. The same study showed that charter school students on average see a decrease in their academic growth in reading and math by of .01 and .03 standard deviations, respectively. Though it is apparent that charter students in elementary and middle school grades have significantly higher rates of learning than in traditional public schools. When these students are examined at high schools and multi‐level schools they have significantly worse results. Some would argue that this disparity is due to the fact that charter schools serve a different population of students who learn differently or live in an environment that gives them a disadvantage than those in the traditional public schools that were

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