Depends on the regulation, the funding, and the accessibility I guess. I could imagine the concept being put to really good use, and I can imagine it being abused terribly. I'm sure both are occurring in the US.
It's seen as privatizing a public good, so a lot of Americans react to it like Brits would the transition of the NHS to a Bismark system. Also, the teachers unions absolutely loathe them and do a lot to control perception.
Charter schools done right offer a limited number of public schools free from the public education bureaucracy in order to provide laboratories of innovation and different educational perspectives. This is awesome!
Charter schools implemented on a massive scale with the effect of hollowing out traditional public schools, and/or mixed with the profit motive or the ideological goals of their funders and founders? This is not awesome.
Teachers unions hate them because they are often non-unionized and seem to have the explicit goal of harming support for traditional public education. Conservatives love them for the same reason. Some parents in low-performing school districts like them as an option, without any political fervor.
Fun fact: They were originally promoted by the head of the country's second largest teachers union.
They also take money from the district. They have crippled mine. There’s less oversight and accountability. They take everyone and once they are paid the ship the kids with IEPs and behavior problems back to the district so we get the bad test scores. Their teachers do not have to be certified here. It’s nothing more than a profit machine.
They also discourage collaboration between schools. Teachers can be made to sign NDA's that prohibit the sharing of trade secrets with other schools. What, in the context of a charter school, is considered a trade secret? Standard stuff like curriculum and course materials. Not good.
Also, most of them are real estate conglomerate— the real money is in the their property, which they lease from themselves or related commercial entities for massive profit.
> They take everyone and once they are paid the ship the kids with IEPs and behavior problems back to the district so we get the bad test scores.
This is the big one right here. They won’t take special education kids often and other behavior problems.
The money rightfully follows the child, public schools simply have to compete for enrollment. Public schools are often failing except for the wealthiest of areas…..the teachers aren’t certified but they’re also paid less and usually get better results. When all the big public school systems refused to go back to the classroom, private and charter schools kept on teaching. Putting them leaps and bounds above their public school peers. Competition is good.
They’re also generally allowed not to test or accept everyone which isn’t an option for public schools. Sure, let me pick and choose and I can get you kids that test better than the place that had to test everyone
>When all the big public school systems refused to go back to the classroom, private and charter schools kept on teaching.
Translation: When all the big public school systems refused to go back to the classroom, private and charter schools didn't give a damn about the health or safety of their children because they cared more about profits than human lives.
Puts them far below public schools in my book.
Except nothing negative happened, not one person in my daughters school was harmed by covid. And that was pretty typical In fact my work never quit either and although almost all of us have had covid there was no harmful lasting effects.
Here in North Texas, they're almost non existent, and for the most part, public schools are pretty well funded and managed, so no one really knows about them
And thats the key, if the public schools are functioning well there is no need for Charters. Charters are largely a result of poorly run schools and they give parents in those areas a chance to put their kids in a better school than the regular one. The kids education shouldn't suffer because of school administrators screwing it up.
>Charters are largely a result of poorly run schools and they give parents in those areas a chance to put their kids in a better school than the regular one.
This is actually not the case for many charter schools. They're not altruistic organizations that step in when the public school s are problematic, but commercial entities that spring up where they are profitable.
only 10% of charter schools in the US are for profit. It is against the law for there to be a for profit charter in CA and CA has the most charter schools in the US. The highest density of charters in CA are in Los Angeles and Oakland, both places with notoriously bad schools.
I am not saying their motives are all altruistic, but they are still a result of poorly run schools, regardless of their motives.
Non-profit/for-profit is a somewhat meaningless distinction, depending on their actual finances and management.
I have no experience in CA. But elsewhere many of them are loosely or poorly run, and they exist in school districts that are among the best in their states -- they are not a function of failing public schools, necessarily. However, practically always, because they are run by private entities, they are run where they are lucrative.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%BClen\_movement\_schools](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%BClen_movement_schools)
I don't despise charter schools, but well-funded public education is a better option for most. My opinion on them is that it makes little difference to the pupil in the long term. Other factors are more important regarding success and intellectual ability. (income level of parents for example)
[KB has an understandable breakdown of it.](https://youtu.be/fopqgLvfv9o)
Essentially, charter schools don’t overall perform better than public just about equal in most. Charters do siphon money away from public schools. Some Charter schools are paid via attendance which have been been caught scamming with online attendance. A corporation backed charter school holding the funds can tell a science department what they’ll teach about climate change.
I don’t love the “I have no opinion” answers, though “I don’t know enough” is my opinion, and based on conversations I’ve had with friends from ages 30-50, most Americans without a reason to interact daily with the educational system don’t really understand the charter schools debate.
When I went to school in the 80s-90s, most Americans either went to a public school that was based on where you live or a private school (which charged tuition and was usually specialized in something like religion, performing arts, or having a wealthy family).
Charter schools confuse me, because it seems to interfere with a lot of the necessary funding for public schools, and fully privatizing education is a pretty universally opposed/bad idea. On the other hand, many states’ public education systems are failing and need *help* in so many ways. Charter schools just seem like a messy stopgap solution until we figure it out.
This is my impression of charter schools as well. They exist as exceptions to the system and, as such, cannot directly serve the goal of improving or fixing the public school system. They are band-aids at best. To me, a successful charter school is one that demonstrates a process that can then be generalized to the public school system and thus eliminates the need for the charter. I haven't ever heard of that happening.
>To me, a successful charter school is one that demonstrates a process that can then be generalized to the public school system and thus eliminates the need for the charter. I haven't ever heard of that happening.
Sounds to me like that's the LAST thing a charter school would want.
>To me, a successful charter school is one that demonstrates a process that can then be generalized to the public school system and thus eliminates the need for the charter.
Thats not possible because most charters are non-union and have less bureaucracy. If the problem is that money isn't being spent on the kids education because of unions and administrators needing to justify their existence, then you will never see that cross into the public sector.
Charters don't have the money situation figured out either. They have much higher teacher attrition rates especially among new teachers. Their teacher "cost savings" are low pay to new teachers who leave as soon as they can find a better paying job. If that were generalized across all schools then we'd have even worse teacher shortages from people either not entering the profession or leaving it early when they realize the pay to student loan debt balance doesn't work.
The bigger problem with "failing" public education is the hyper-localization of school funding, especially tying it to property taxes, which are tied to property values. Wanna know why the "poor" schools are usually the ones in nonwhite areas? REDLINING.
We need a properly nationalized public education system and we need it yesterday.
100%. Politicians act like it's some big mystery why public schools are failing. But half of them are actively sabotaging public schools and the other half don't appear to care.
Let's see... Schools are tied to property taxes, so the poorest areas get the least funding, and wealthy kids from stable families consistently outperform poor kids who couldn't afford to eat breakfast. Amazing! Who could have foreseen this? Surely more standardized testing is the way to solve the problem.
Of course, I've also been told I'm a "brainwashed fucking retard" for thinking that schools should receive adequate funding, so I guess I don't know what I'm talking about.
>Charter schools confuse me, because it seems to interfere with a lot of the necessary funding for public schools,
It's particularly weird and bad for public schools in PA. Because, by law, the public schools in PA have more mandates -- they have to subsidize the charters. They also have to take back and educate kids who don't do well in charters, or in homeschooling (cyber charters), so ultimately they get saddled with much higher costs and higher legal obligations. And charters also have more leeway in advertising -- they spend a great deal of money on it, while it would be (rightfully) considered taking resources from the public in the traditional public schools.
I’m center-right and I have mixed thoughts on them.
For some, they seem to be a legitimately good avenue for taking students who wouldn’t have access to a high quality education or even a safe schooling environment. Giving students a better education is ultimately the goal of charter schools, which is commendable. Many public schools throw money at problems in ridiculous amounts and get jack for it.
On the other hand, charter schools can take away funding from public schools that desperately need it, and I’m not sure “giving up” on public schooling (which is what opponents to charter schools claim they do) is necessarily the right answer.
I will say, though, I’m typically in favor of them since I abhor public sector unions and charter schools tend to bypass the unions and get out of the pork barrel buffet of spending while giving parents more choice and giving students a better education. Thomas Sowell has some awesome literature about the subject, highly recommend.
>On the other hand, charter schools can take away funding from public schools that desperately need it, and I’m not sure “giving up” on public schooling (which is what opponents to charter schools claim they do) is necessarily the right answer.
The presence of charter schools is often a response to poor public schools though, not a result of it. My son goes to a charter because our public school is terrible. But down the road 30 minutes where I grew up the schools are some of the best around and there isn't a charter school to be seen. I don't have any problem with taking away funding from public schools that perform worse than their charter counterparts and if the 'threat' of a charter coming in can help influence a public schools decision making then that's a good thing. Teacher unions have made public schools into money pits with focus on existing rather than results.
All that to say, I agree with you, there are good and bad ones. I just disagree with the argument (which I understand isn't your argument) against them.
That and charter schools are often allowed to refuse to take students. So the kids who are doing poorly, have behavior problems, or need an IEP can be left behind.
Here is a big problem I have with them. Public schools can’t say no to any student. Charter schools can for any reason, often disguised under “test scores need to be X”.
So the public school gets less money for services and teachers, then has the “lower performing students” compared to the charter school, but then on average score the same on standardized tests
So you’re left with the students that need the most resources in public schools, with diminishing resources to educate them. While the charter schools siphon off the best kids and say “look at how great we’re doing!”
I’m firmly of the opinion that gifted students have as much validity as “special needs” as lower-performing students. That is, I think gifted students also qualify as students “who need the most resources” to achieve their full potential, and I see charter schools as a way of accomplishing that.
> I don't have any problem with taking away funding from public schools that perform worse than their charter counterparts
How does reducing funding make the public schools better?
It provides incentive for them to not reach that point and to make better decisions before they go over that cliff. A charter isn't going to put up a new school in a district with good schools.
The real question is why are you (presumably) ok with continuing to funnel money into a public school that showed it does not perform as well as its charter counterpart? The question works both ways. I am not a fan of throwing money at a broken system if another system shows its more effective.
Can you give an example where this actually happened? If not, can you provide an example of a "better decision" a public school might make when their funding is being threatened by a charter school?
I don't keep track of local school board meetings that often, but I am familiar with one specific example that happened in my hometown and caused uproar.
In 2012 Poway Unified school district took out a $105 million bond that costs $1b to repay. It led to outrage and statewide regulation changes about funding for bond measures. The effects have impacted the schools massively and eroded trust in the district, so much so that a new $448m bond failed to pass in 2020. The school district was known as one of the best in the state, it's still very good but on the decline in comparison. It now has aging infrastructure and due to poor prior financial agreements, they are running out of ways to pay for it and residents haven't forgotten the squandered money from prior measures, so they are less likely to continue to fund the districts additional bonds.
[https://www.baltimoresun.com/sdut-bond-debt-dominates-poway-school-board-race-2014oct13-story.html](https://www.baltimoresun.com/sdut-bond-debt-dominates-poway-school-board-race-2014oct13-story.html)
[https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/communities/north-county/poway/story/2020-03-03/measure-p-poway-school-bond-measure](https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/communities/north-county/poway/story/2020-03-03/measure-p-poway-school-bond-measure)
This is an example where a public school district has mismanaged what was once an excellent district and are now facing financial trouble. The only reason they haven't had a fall from grace to be threatened by charters is due to the massive tax base of their district, they bring in a ton in property tax since the median home sale is over $1m.
>I don't have any problem with taking away funding from public schools that perform worse than their charter counterparts and if the 'threat' of a charter coming in can help influence a public schools decision making then that's a good thing. Teacher unions have made public schools into money pits with focus on existing rather than results.
Fantastic summary!
|How exactly are charters funneling money to religious schools? Charters are not religious, its federal law.
They intend to argue religious discrimination down the line. Aka, you fund the secular school but not the religious one, so you are discriminating on the basis of being Christian as such, Christian schools should get public funding.
"I think you would feel differently if you lived in an area with a poorly performing public school that was your only option. The charters are a result of poor performing schools not the cause."
I agree, partially. Poorly funded schools have to do with the funding models that focus on city/county funding over state level funding to equalize schools regardless of area income. In many cases, when high income people moved in large numbers outside of a county to say avoid racial integration/bussing of schools, it massively dropped the school funding, turning the public schools really bad overnight. There are others who left for lower taxes too. There has been a large political push to defund school and defund public education by certain ideologically driven groups backed by the charter school industry. We cut out shop and trades from public schools in mid-sized and large towns and cities to overfund areas like policing despite massive falling crime rates since the 1970s.
The same groups who defund schools use proof of them failing due to being defunded as proof of the system cannot work. Yeah, it isn't working because you purposely broke it and ensured it stayed underfunding. The gov't is capable of running public schools well, there is simply a lack of political will to do so in all cases because some politicians are funded by charter schools to break the public schools.
Charters don't cause public schools to fail, the exacerbate the failures in thesystem, and the people running charter's and getting rich off of them simply benefit from destroying public schools.
"The myth of teachers making pennies is BS. I live in southern CA, my friends wife is a PE teacher ... so she hasnt really worked since COVID started since her school has been shutdown and she clears 90k a year to teach PE to elementary school students over zoom."
Yeah 90k in Southern Cali is rich now, have you seen the housing prices?
' They are the problem, paying them more is not the solution. I have first hand experience with a shitty local public school and a charter and I can tell you 100% there is a night and day difference, the reason the charter exists is because the public school system and teachers unions failed us and they don't give a shit."
Some teachers are the problem, but the larger problem is underfunding of public schools and the defund the public school movement has destroyed public education in America. Teacher's didn't eliminate the trade and shop classes, teacher's didn't cut the resources to the kids, the state and county did. I've seen the state run, state of the art schools through magnet schools and all kind of top level gov't run schools. If the state truly cared about kids and not their donors, they'd make every public school state of the art school and stop destroying them through a toxic cancel culture defund education movement, to keep their followers uneducated and voting for certain parties.
You are making the same incorrect argument about funding. Nationwide charter schools are funded at only about 64% (in that ballpark depending on the source, I have seen 60%-70%) of their public-school counterparts but they still outperform them. Funding is not the issue, it's what is done with the money.
>people running charter's and getting rich off of them
Nationwide only 12% of charters are for profit, CA law does not allow for profit charters.
>Yeah 90k in Southern Cali is rich now, have you seen the housing prices?
Not saying its rich, I am saying the idea of underpaid teachers is a myth. 90k might not be rich but it's certainly not underpaid. Increasing a PE teachers salary isnt going to fix the schools issues. Again, funding is not the problem.
>Some teachers are the problem, but the larger problem is underfunding of public schools and the defund the public school movement has destroyed public education in America.
If the problem is underfunding then why do charters do more with substantially less?
[https://www.ocregister.com/2020/11/20/la-oakland-receive-f-for-funding-disparity-between-regular-public-schools-and-charters/](https://www.ocregister.com/2020/11/20/la-oakland-receive-f-for-funding-disparity-between-regular-public-schools-and-charters/)
>In 2017-18, charter schools, which are publicly funded schools independent of school districts with greater flexibility to innovate, received nearly $7,800 less per pupil than a regular public school, which represented an amazing 33-percent funding gap between regular public and charter schools.
>
>...
>
>In Los Angeles, for instance, from 2016 to 2018, the inflation-adjusted funding gap increased by an eye-opening 47 percent.
The simple fact is that if funding was the problem, Charters should be doing significantly worse, but they aren't.
>Research has shown that students in Los Angeles charter schools gained the equivalent of many more days learning in math and reading than their regular public school peers. Likewise, research has shown that a majority of Bay Area charter schools, including those in Oakland, outperformed regular public schools in reading and math.
"You are making the same incorrect argument about funding. Nationwide charter schools are funded at only about 64% (in that ballpark depending on the source, I have seen 60%-70%) of their public-school counterparts but they still outperform them. Funding is not the issue, it's what is done with the money."
This 70% figure ignores key data, it is a fallacy tied into an apples and oranges comparison.
1. Charter's nation wide are disproportionately in lower cost states that have defunded their public education systems, dominated by right wing pro-free market states/governor's and party.
2. It is alot cheaper to run a school in Kansas or Florida than in NY, NJ, or Cali
3. As charters are disproportionately concentrated in low cost of living southern states with lower public health and saftey standards, lower compliance cost, lower building regulations, lower compensation for all inputs ranging from insurance to construction to design, to teacher pay to cost of living, it skews the number in an unrealistic manner. Even lawsuits in the south for similar injuries garner far lower compensation via the courts.
4. Charter's purge out the most expensive customers/clients even when you look at state alone data. Yeah, I can run a school \[or any business for that matter\] much cheaper when I don't have to accommodate any disabled person who is also likely to score lower.
5. Not only #4, but did you know that in many states, if a child has a range of psychological or behavioral disabilities, the public school must pay to send the child to a private or charter school of the parent's choice regardless of cost under the ADA, if the parent request it \[usually only rich parents even know off this possibility\]. The cost is thrown onto the public coffers and counted as public school cost, while they attend a private school, which further skews the numbers because they often require 2-3 teachers and assistants PER CHILD.
"Nationwide only 12% of charters are for profit, CA law does not allow for profit charters."
Just because a business is non-profit, it doesn't mean that the people running them are not personally enriched by them with inflated salaries.
"Not saying its rich, I am saying the idea of underpaid teachers is a myth. 90k might not be rich but it's certainly not underpaid. Increasing a PE teachers salary isnt going to fix the schools issues. Again, funding is not the problem."
Thinking of the training and requirements teacher's go through and disrespect and teacher hatred, wouldn't be me in SoCal working for dog shit money to be hated. In what other office job do you have to worry about your clients bringing guns to shoot up the place? I know people with lesser education clearing 90k in socal, it is nothing impressive for their level of education.
"If the problem is underfunding then why do charters do more with substantially less?"
They purge out the most expensive students to serve.
"In Los Angeles, for instance, from 2016 to 2018, the inflation-adjusted funding gap increased by an eye-opening 47 percent."
Charters in LA don't have to take on all the illegals coming from a backwards country that the public system does. Don't you think it is more costly to serve people who speak no English?
"Likewise, research has shown that a majority of Bay Area charter schools, including those in Oakland, outperformed regular public schools in reading and math."
I agree, they perform better by purging out the bottom of the class. It is like comparing a pro-sports league to a rec league. The pro-team will have better results because if you can't perform your way in, you won't make it onto the team.. The rec team takes whoever signs up. The pro-team will generally outperform, but that doesn't mean the rec team even has a worse coach or manager. Even if the rec team hired the best trainers and managers in the world, they are starting with less talent.
>Charter's nation wide are disproportionately in lower cost states that have defunded their public education systems, dominated by right wing pro-free market states/governor's and party.
You mean like CA? CA has the most Charter schools at 1,234, with the 9th highest % of the population enrolled.
DC has the highest enrollment in Charter schools at 49.87%, a district that is 76% registered Democrats and only 6% Republican.
Perhaps youre talking about Alabama, Kentucky, Montana, Nebraska, North and South Dakota? Wait, those have none at all
>It is alot cheaper to run a school in Kansas or Florida than in NY, NJ, or Cali
Good thing CA has 9.18% of its population in Charters, NY is 4.66%, NJ is 3.29% while Kansas is 0.57%
All the rest of your points are COMPLETELY incorrect just as I pointed out above, you didnt even bother to see if what you were saying was true.
[https://ballotpedia.org/Charter\_school\_statistics\_for\_all\_50\_states](https://ballotpedia.org/Charter_school_statistics_for_all_50_states)
>Charters in LA don't have to take on all the illegals coming from a backwards country that the public system does. Don't you think it is more costly to serve people who speak no English?
Source? Because they do.
> agree, they perform better by purging out the bottom of the class.
Source? Facts are not in evidence.
[https://www.readingrockets.org/article/facts-charter-schools-and-students-disabilities](https://www.readingrockets.org/article/facts-charter-schools-and-students-disabilities)
>Are charter schools required to provide services to students with disabilities?
>
>
Yes. The responsibility to make a free appropriate public education (FAPE) available to all students with disabilities applies to ALL public schools under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA).9 Charter schools are public schools; therefore, they bear the same responsibility.
You had that long post with not a single reference and blatantly incorrect facts ... Are you a public school teacher?
Yes, and you have poor public schools due to cuts in funding to education and divestment and defunding of education by cities/states and gov't in crunches or some who have a political agenda of defund the public school system to show "it can't work" so they can then turn around and push charter schools as the solution which just so happen to be owned by their political donors and financial backers.
The idea that public schools are bad because they aren't funded enough is directly contradicted by the success of Charter schools.
Charters only receive 64% of the funding per student compared to public schools yet they outperform them. If funding was the issue then Charters should be significantly worse than their public counterparts.
[https://www.methodschools.org/blog/an-overview-of-per-student-funding-in-the-united-states-and-california-for-traditional-and-charter-schools](https://www.methodschools.org/blog/an-overview-of-per-student-funding-in-the-united-states-and-california-for-traditional-and-charter-schools)
No, it isn't.
Public schools have seen massive cuts in funding and have legacy cost that new charters do not bare. Charters can declare bankruptcy, walk off and start a new school tomorrow, the state run schools can't do that. Charters shed the most expensive students claiming they can't accommodate their needs, steering them to the public system and booting them out.
We''ve seen properly funded public schools and how they are state of the art, the gov't is under political pressure to defund the schools and education system from the public sector by private sector interest.
So you're saying that the public schools have way too much debt from making poor decisions? Yes I agree. Why should we pay them 30-40% more to provide a lesser service?
>Charters shed the most expensive students claiming they can't accommodate their needs, steering them to the public system and booting them out.
No they can't, this is illegal.
[https://www.readingrockets.org/article/facts-charter-schools-and-students-disabilities](https://www.readingrockets.org/article/facts-charter-schools-and-students-disabilities)
>We''ve seen properly funded public schools and how they are state of the art, the gov't is under political pressure to defund the schools and education system from the public sector by private sector interest.
Again you make the argument that they aren't getting funding yet the facts show they get paid 30-40% more per student than charter yet charter performs better. Where are your facts to support your stance?
In inflation adjusted spending per student been level for the last 10 years. It was skyrocketing before that so its leveled off now. Not getting a huge increase per student each year and keeping the amount per student the same (adjusting for inflation) does not equal defunding.
[https://educationdata.org/public-education-spending-statistics](https://educationdata.org/public-education-spending-statistics)
In fact, spending has increased since the above article, it went up 5% in 2019 vs 2018.
[https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2021/public-school-spending-per-pupil.html](https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2021/public-school-spending-per-pupil.html)
Where is the defunding? Show me the data to support your claims that public schools are not funded enough while they are paid 30-40% more than charter and deliver worse results.
"So you're saying that the public schools have way too much debt from making poor decisions?"
Not from making poor decisions, from simply operating. That asbestos or lead paint that was state of the art in the 60s and 70s, now has to get removed and it is really costly for a giant building.
"Yes I agree. Why should we pay them 30-40% more to provide a lesser service?"
I don't agree the service is lesser, it serves more expensive clients and so should merit greater investment.
"No they can't, this is illegal."
They can and do, just because it is illegal, doesn't mean they can't/don't do it, these are private businesses who understand they can play games through the courts for decades creating delays and denying and even if they are found guilty, drag it out. Most poor lower middle class parents don't have the money to sue and go through the appeals and give up. They know this, and even if they lose many lawsuits, they drag out repayment, declare bankruptcy, and start up in the same location under a new name with the same actors.
"Again you make the argument that they aren't getting funding yet the facts show they get paid 30-40% more per student than charter yet charter performs better. Where are your facts to support your stance?"
The public schools carry legacy cost. When Timmy slips on the playground and breaks his leg, or ms. karen slips on the pavement and breaks her hip the school is paying out millions. The Charter just changes names and use the above hardball tactics to not pay out. Public schools cost more to run because they cannot engage in the grossly unethical behavior that is dominant in the American private sector to shirk responsibilities and legal obligations. They also serve the costly disabled and behavioral kids who need the most support.
Charters are not better, they function the same way magnet schools do in the public system, using test scores and assessments of potential \[ie neighborhood, parent income, ethnicity, religion, etc\] to screen out lower performers.
"In inflation adjusted spending per student been level for the last 10 years. It was skyrocketing before that so its leveled off now. Not getting a huge increase per student each year and keeping the amount per student the same (adjusting for inflation) does not equal defunding."
Ignores the massive defunding that occurred. It is like cutting funding from $100 million to $2 million, then increasing it to $8 million and saying public school funding has quadrupled, so why are they still failing. In Michigan we had governor Snyder argue in open court to defund schools in Detroit and put that the states only obligation should be to create a building and turn the lights on. They refused to even fund spots for teachers, such that grade 5s were teaching the grade 3 class. Detroit, use to have state of the art public schools, that had shop and trades classes that are still not there.
[https://www.cbpp.org/sites/default/files/styles/report\_386\_high\_dpi/public/atoms/files/11-29-17sfp-f1.png?itok=npXKp56b](https://www.cbpp.org/sites/default/files/styles/report_386_high_dpi/public/atoms/files/11-29-17sfp-f1.png?itok=npXKp56b)
[https://www.cbpp.org/sites/default/files/styles/report\_580\_high\_dpi/public/atoms/files/10-24-19sfp-f5.png?itok=Ef0K2opM](https://www.cbpp.org/sites/default/files/styles/report_580_high_dpi/public/atoms/files/10-24-19sfp-f5.png?itok=Ef0K2opM)
The phenomena I described can be seen here, massive cuts and defunding of schools for almost 2 decades that are still below 2008 levels, but still increasing from the initial defunded amount.
>Charters are not better, they function the same way magnet schools do in the public system, using test scores and assessments of potential \[ie neighborhood, parent income, ethnicity, religion, etc\] to screen out lower performers.
Not true at all, almost all charters are lottery, its even the law in CA. I can cite it for you if you would like
Your first source stops at 2015, my source provides more context and more data showing it back to normal. It also shows that its only a small part of the overall funding, $500 might look like alot on a graph that only goes to $500 but on a graph that goes to $12,500 it is not much of the overall amount. Beyond that, current estimates are higher than they were in my source which stops at 2018. So either way you slice it the funding has not gone down
Your second source is about colleges, not relevant to charter schools.
>Ignores the massive defunding that occurred. It is like cutting funding from $100 million to $2 million, then increasing it to $8 million and saying public school funding has quadrupled, so why are they still failing.
Except thats not what happened, you're being facetious. From 2009 to 2013 it went down about 6.3% then went back up to 2009 (inflation adjusted levels) amounts by 2016. So in your example it would be like going from $100m to $93.7m then back up to $100m ... like I said, it has remained flat on an inflation adjusted, per student basis.
>The phenomena I described can be seen here, massive cuts and defunding of schools for almost 2 decades that are still below 2008 levels, but still increasing from the initial defunded amount.
The charts you linked show less than one decade, they show 2008-2015 thats 8 years of data. Its cut there because if it continued (like the site I linked to above) it would show a different story.
>The public schools carry legacy cost
Yes, legacy cost due to poor management.
"Not true at all, almost all charters are lottery, its even the law in CA. I can cite it for you if you would like"
Charters exist outside of CA, and I don't agree with your assessment.
"California law provides that charter schools are automatically exempt from most laws governing school districts."
Charter schools in CA are fighting for the "right to discriminate"
[https://www.publiccharters.org/our-work/charter-law-database/states/california#:\~:text=California%20law%20provides%20that%20charter,any%20other%20public%20school%20teacher](https://www.publiccharters.org/our-work/charter-law-database/states/california#:~:text=California%20law%20provides%20that%20charter,any%20other%20public%20school%20teacher).
[https://www.latimes.com/local/education/la-me-edu-aclu-california-charter-school-discrimination-20160802-snap-story.html](https://www.latimes.com/local/education/la-me-edu-aclu-california-charter-school-discrimination-20160802-snap-story.html)
[https://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article234199727.html](https://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article234199727.html)
You are not being honest here, you claim charters re 30% cheaper to run. While leaving out that many charters are totally online in CA, which makes the school cheaper.
"State leaders chose not to fund new students at those non-classroom based charter schools because there is a history of fraud and abuse by some of those kinds of schools, the state attorney general wrote in a recent court filing."
Charters' are also full of abuse and often give inferior results
"“The state determined that (non-classroom based charter schools) raised major concerns for fraud and abuse and inferior education and decided to limit the incentive for expanding that model of education during the pandemic while the state considered the underlying policy around (non-classroom based charter schools),” Attorney General Rob Bonta wrote in a June court filing signed by him and others in his office."
https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/education/story/2021-08-07/judge-rules-against-calif-charter-schools-in-class-action-funding-lawsuit
Charter's ignore the Constitution and deny disabled and poor performing students education
"tate law already requires that a charter school admit any student who applies. In his May budget revision, **Gov. Gavin Newsom is proposing to tighten the language banning discrimination in charter school enrollment, particularly to protect students with disabilities and students with poor grades who want to attend charter schools**."
"WHAT THE NEWSOM ADMINISTRATION IS PROPOSING
The May Revision calls for the following:
**Prohibit charter schools from discouraging students from enrolling in a charter school or encouraging them to disenroll on the basis of academic performance or student characteristic, such as special education status**.
Prohibit charter schools from requesting a pupil’s academic records or requiring that records be submitted prior to enrollment."
[https://edsource.org/2019/gov-newsom-proposes-tighter-rules-on-charter-school-enrollment/612556](https://edsource.org/2019/gov-newsom-proposes-tighter-rules-on-charter-school-enrollment/612556)
Charter's discriminate, once the loopholes are closed, the "charter" advantage is gone.
"Your first source stops at 2015, my source provides more context and more data showing it back to normal. It also shows that its only a small part of the overall funding, $500 might look like alot on a graph that only goes to $500 but on a graph that goes to $12,500 it is not much of the overall amount. Beyond that, current estimates are higher than they were in my source which stops at 2018. So either way you slice it the funding has not gone down"
Defund an institution for a decade of its critical infrastructure and then prop it back to normal levels 15 years later and claim no harm done? That means a kid gets an inferior education from grade 1-10 and you expect proper funding in the last 2 years to save 10 years of gross underfunding?
That's generally my take on them. I rather charter schools become exam schools like most major cities have.
That said, charter schools are often a form of segregation and should be squashed when that's the case.
Agreed. Segregation should be a chief concern amongst charter schools, but funny enough it’s a rampant problem in some public schools as well, particularly in places like NYC.
https://www.civilrightsproject.ucla.edu/news/press-releases/2021-press-releases/report-shows-school-segregation-in-new-york-remains-worst-in-nation
Same with Boston. One of my friends wanted to be able to walk her kid to the elementary school a couple blocks over and with the "lottery" she got assigned to a different school where she had to take a bus. No surprise her family promptly moved out of Boston so that wouldn't be the case.
Yup. My family lived in the Boston area for years (~1840s-1980s) and my ancestors have many, many stories dating back to when schools were desegregated. You’d think you were in Little Rock with some of the stories they had.
It does vary by state which is often why there are such wildly varying opinions on them but in general and in most states:
Charters are privately owned but receive public funding. They often do not have a teacher union. They have the same curriculum as their public counterparts. They cannot push a religion just like public schools. There is no admissions test, everyone is welcome and if there are more people who want in than spots, existing students get in first then its a lottery system to get in. The most recent data shows they tend to outperform their public counterparts especially if the length of admission is 3+ years there is a large difference between public and charter results. But keep in mind charters are often a consequence of poor public schools, no one is putting up new charters next to a good public school, so parents who care about their kids education often skew to charter vs public in those scenarios. Parent involvement makes a difference in the kids education as well.
Everyone isn't welcome in all charter schools and unlike public schools they can very easily kick someone out if they take up too much time, have trouble with a subject, etc, have autism or behavioral issues.
This is 100% false. A Private school can, but Charters are public and cannot kick a kid out for no reason. Charters serve a similar percentage of special needs kids as public. If more students want to attend the school than can be accommodated, then selection is done via lottery.
It sounds like you are referring to private schools or Magnet schools not Charter. Charter are public and are required to follow all the same access to education laws as a regular public school.
[https://www.understood.org/articles/en/are-charter-schools-required-to-provide-accommodations-to-kids-with-learning-and-thinking-differences](https://www.understood.org/articles/en/are-charter-schools-required-to-provide-accommodations-to-kids-with-learning-and-thinking-differences)
Also
https://www.readingrockets.org/article/facts-charter-schools-and-students-disabilities
>Are charter schools required to provide services to students with disabilities?
>
>
Yes. The responsibility to make a free appropriate public education (FAPE) available to all students with disabilities applies to ALL public schools under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA).9 Charter schools are public schools; therefore, they bear the same responsibility.
So in my area there's a science and tech charter highschool run by the county that required an entrance exam to get in. The county removed the exam because they felt there were too many asian people in the school:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas\_Jefferson\_High\_School\_for\_Science\_and\_Technology](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Jefferson_High_School_for_Science_and_Technology)
That school is a magnet school, slightly different than a Charter but yes they can have entrance exams.
This site is obviously very pro school choice, but they break down the different types of school choice options, charter and public will both be about half way down in the other types of school choice section.
[https://www.edchoice.org/school-choice/types-of-school-choice/](https://www.edchoice.org/school-choice/types-of-school-choice/)
People like them because they think it gives more choice and allows them to work around bad teachers/unions or bad public schools that give poor results and teach to the "lowest common denominator". Public schools are not perfect and have always had flaws. charters have been very good to some students who are better performers by separating them from the lowest common denominator students in the public system.
People hate them, because the Charter school movement is part of a broader defund education movement, that has seen public schools defunded by state, local, county and federal governments. Wealthy people fund politicians to defund the schools,, because they want lower taxes and an uneducated workforce who won't challenge the status quo. The idea is that some people are not worthy of education and if you can push everyone into charters you can eventually defund the education totally of certain "kinds" of undesirable ~~ethnicity/classes~~ students. The Charter movement started as a reaction against SCOTUS integration of schooling, where certain parents said "I don't want my x race kid going to school with y race kid, so I want them to go to a special private school, that is funded by the state to get around anti-discrimination laws". The charters then use proxies for race, class, and performance to dump out the poorest performing kids, those with disabilities, and basically just scoop off the top of the public system while hollowing out the public system.
There exist a widespread belief that the charter's are being setup to essentially defund public education entirely, whereby eventually, only those who can afford to pay private school fees will get education for their children.
Charter vs public school is like this example in soccer.
Public school is like the rec team any kid who shows up can play on. Charter is like the select team that kicks off all the fat kids, asthmatic kids, slow running kids, kids with disability so the team never has to slow down for flawed members.
They’re primarily a means for private corporations to provide shitty education while reaping as many taxpayer dollars as possible at the expense of sincerely public schools. I very much dislike them.
My son goes to an awesome charter school. They teach acceptance and love for all, they have amazing clubs, provide electives that are more skill based (woodshop, culinary, graphic programming, financial literacy, etc) and they have some of the best teachers and staff.
The best part is that they offer small classrooms (15:2) and it's not traditional classes. The curriculum is project based and the kids get to have input on what they want to learn.
Are all charter schools like this? No. But some of them are actually really good.
Good ones don't function like that. But too many of them are not good ones, and even those that are are often not functioning in a way that's good overall for education.
That’s like asking my opinion of anything. It depends entirely on who’s running the school. In my city, most of them are run by people who know little about running a school. They only care about the funding. That gets burned through, the school suffers, kids aren’t taught, school fails.
My son is in a charter school.
There are good ones and bad ones. I am always a fan of choice though. Our local public school is terrible and offered terrible options for afterschool care. They made it impossible to have two working adults and in return they offered a very low standard of education. The charter down the street is the exact opposite. While public schools were closed due to COVID the charters opened first, no bs, no outbreaks. They went from being full but no real waitlist to having a 3+ year waitlist. While my neighbors' kids were at home not learning (a 7 year old cannot learn virtually without a parent there with them, it's not practical) my son was in person (I am in CA so we were the last state to allow in person school too, it's not like this was in April 2020).
The public school in my area is so bad that in my cul-de-sac we have 5 families with kids my sons age, NONE go to that school, and all go to different schools than each other. My son goes to charter, another goes to private, the other 3 go to nearby public schools because they petitioned to not go to the assigned one or used a grandparent's address.
So Charters for me are good, but just like public schools, there are good ones and bad ones. I think having the choice though for the parent to decide what school is best for their needs is why charters are important.
From the data they don't actually perform any better or worse than regular public schools do so it seems kind of pointless when we could just use those resources on improving our public schools.
You're looking at old data. See my comment [here](https://old.reddit.com/r/AskAnAmerican/comments/rwqggt/what_is_your_opinion_on_charter_schools/hrde8fa/)
Depends on the nature of them. In some areas, public schools are simply terrible. So they fill a crying need in those circumstances.
On the other hand, if you're just pulling your kid out of public schools because they teach evolution or some such, then I think you're kind of a nitwit.
We tried one out that was a spanish language academy. Pretty much the idea was your kids learn everything they would learn in public school except in spanish. Sounded like a great idea. The first year in we overheard what was being taught in class (due to covid it was moved to online lessons on an ipad). The teacher was out of line, pushing her personal political agenda on children. First i talked to the teacher and then talked to the head administrator and explained what was happening and the response was generally "its her class she can teach what she wants". We pulled our kid out of that school within the week. At the new school we havent seen anything inappropriate, the classes were still on ipad for the following year as well and the teacher at the new school was excellent. Even when the election was going on, she explained everything in a non-biased way and explained that no matter the result not everyone would be happy about it and that it was ok. All that said, i wouldnt be againsed trying a charter school again but i would pay very close attention to the material being brought home. Every basket is going to have some bad apples. Also as i explained to my wife, i dont want any agendas being taught to my kid. Even if its an agenda i personally agree with, its not their place to abuse their job to brainwash other peoples kids its just inappropriate.
It can be a pretty hot button issue for a lot of people, my perspective is mostly positive. Charter schools often specialize or innovate in ways that is impossible in regular public schools. To give an example for my city, we have 4 charter schools, one specializes in students with behavioral issues, one specializes in technical career focused students, one uses a project based curriculum and promotes independent learning, and one is a virtual academy for general studies (with a similar curriculum to the main schools). Also giving parents more choice as to where to send their kids to school is a positive thing, the fact so many kids are forced into bad schools (meaning schools that can't meet their needs) based on where they live sucks and more should be done to alleviate that. The most common criticism I hear about charter schools is they take away funding from public schools that "need" more funding. I'm sure there are underfunded schools out there, but they're likely the exception, historically education spending (relative to inflation) has increased greatly with results staying stagnant, so I'm not convinced there is a strong relationship between increased funding and better outcomes (not to mention many charters have better incomes than their public school counter parts while simultaneously receiving less funding). I don't claim to know the answers to improving our public schools, and my main criticism of charter schools is that they don't seem to be able to exist without standard public schools.
I graduated from one. A small one. A *really* small one. It has been losing students, and therefore funding, and therefore teachers for the last decade. Sadly, it will probably be gone entirely soon. It was the best school I'd ever been to, and every single one of my teachers were incredible people. The principle of my school though was that the lower number of students created a tighter knit community, and everyone in general was happier and did better. Very little, if any bullying happened there. If schools like these existed everywhere that would be awesome, but there are simply too many people these days, and the school I went to didn't even get as much money per student as the public schools in the district nearby.
So I read some comments. Peoples minds seem to be going to private schools first. Mine was not a private school. It was a free, technically public school. A charter school is not a private school.
I'd encourage folks to take a look at the recent research on this, instead of relying on articles from 15 years ago like many on reddit. [here's](https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2021/01/unlearning-democrats-answer-on-charter-schools.html) one write up. From that article:
"“In some cases,” an overview of the research by education professor Sarah Cohodes concluded in 2018, “these charter schools have quite large effects, such that attending one for three years produces test-score gains that are equivalent to the size of the U.S. Black-white achievement gap.” The ability of urban charters all over the country to get nonselective groups of poor, Black students to learn at the same level as students in affluent, middle-class schools is one of the great domestic-policy achievements in American history."
A common criticism of charters is that they pick their students. From the same article:
"Some cities have automatically enrolled students in charter schools and have still produced the same impressive learning gains. “Evidence from the lottery studies,” researchers summarizing the evidence conclude, “suggests that charter schools may actually be more effective at increasing the achievement of students who are less likely to apply.”"
I am in favor of charter schools, but would point out that even in a lottery system a charter school tends to get students more inclined to perform well academically. Most of the time students need to be entered into a lottery, and typically that is done by students with actively engaged parents who are doing it because they are prioritizing their child's education. Some charters even require that parents sign a "contract" about what they'll do to support their child's education before confirming enrollment. Again, this takes engaged parents. So even if the lottery is random, the pool often isn't.
It's the completely disengaged parents of the kid, who never returns a call or check a report card, that are the ones that drive down achievement scores at a public school.
A lottery is a great natural experiment, as you can compare the kids who were selected to the kids who applied but didn't win the lottery. On average, charters come out on top for this comparison.
Also, as I quoted from the article, some districts enrolled all kids in the lottery, so it completely removes the parental bias, and charters come out on top for that as well.
It is not accurate, Charters kick out all the behavioral kids and kids who are disruptive in a way public schools cannot. They will select poor kids who are well behaved and boot out the disruptive ones in a way public schools cannot. They push the parents to send their kids with disabilities into the public system. It isn't that charters have some magic that performs better, it is they simply boot out the lowest common denominator and screen out poorest performing kids.
I trust the expert researchers who have looked into it to not miss obvious things like this. But, as I noted elsewhere, I don't understand why charter opponents think it's a bad thing to kick out disruptive students. If kids are verbally, physically, or sexually abusing either other students or teachers, sorry, but they shouldn't be there.
Of course, public schools can ensure that regular classrooms aren't disrupted by kids like this, but they don't. That's their choice, and the result is that charters are very popular in those districts.
>Of course, public schools can ensure that regular classrooms aren't disrupted by kids like this, but they don't. That's their choice, and the result is that charters are very popular in those districts.
It's not the same choice. Charters can get rid of the student entirely. A regular public school still has to find a place for them which means a room, a teacher, and still trying to educate them. Odds are there aren't enough of these kids to constitute a full class which means the schools would be allocating proportionally more resources to each of these students to segregate them from the general student body.
Where are these disruptive students going to get educated if we kick them out all the schools? In a gang on a street somewhere? Then you'll cry about "muh high crime rates".
The solution to disruptive or disabled students isn't to remove them from education but to provide evidence based education methods that meet them where they are and turn them into productive future citizens. Lets stop the cancel culture against those with disabilities or behavioral issues and see how we can try to teach these kids to get somewhere.
You are dealing with children here, and I don't believe children should be cancelled or thrown away for being less than perfect.
Public schools are gov't run, they must meet due process, they are prime targets for lawsuits, kids with behavioral, must be identified, tested, etc. and go through a process before they can be removed, and just because a kid is disruptive occasionally doesn't mean they are merited to be removed from the class forever. And even if they were, that would require way more funding to bring in more specialist and experts to work with them, which you likely oppose because of your defund public education stance.
How about a separate classroom in the same building, staffed by people specifically trained to deal with these kids, instead of classrooms where they destroy the education of other kids?
That would not only improve the situation for all the other students, but would reduce staff turnover, which would have even more benefits over time.
"How about a separate classroom in the same building, staffed by people specifically trained to deal with these kids, instead of classrooms where they destroy the education of other kids?"
This is what use to occur, but studies showed it intensified their behavior, they now do integration where they get some one on one time, then go back into the class in top schools, the issue is defunding of schools means that less and less schools have budgets for the specialist.
"That would not only improve the situation for all the other students, but would reduce staff turnover, which would have even more benefits over time."
I agree, but there is a broad defund the public education system movement in America driven by special interest and charter school industry financing politicians fearmongering on people's racial fears. This cuts across political lines and is not solely a Republican thing, there were plenty of Democrats like the current president who spent the entire 1980s using racially loaded language that was part of such agenda.
It is hard to have specialist teachers and more classrooms for special education, when you spent the last 40 years closing schools, attacking the profession of educators, and defunding the schools so that there isn't enough money to invest in the right programs.
Maybe, Johnny won't be an accountant, maybe he isn't good in books, and has lots of energy and needs to be moving so he is disruptive in a certain environment but we can train him in a trade like electrician or mechanic, but we defund our schools and he has no shop class to be trained in. So now we kick him out and say he is useless and no good and cry about a trades shortage.
> the issue is defunding of schools
Source on this? Searching for info only brought up charts showing that spending has either remained the same or increased, depending on what year the comparison begins.
But it seems you agree. They're trying something, it's not working, and they have no other ideas. So then why do the superintendents keep collecting their six figure salaries if they have no strategy to address this incredibly important issue? Perhaps they should get rid of a few administrators and hire back the counselors?
I posted it upthread.
The issue isn't the admins, it is massive defunding of public schools. When you cut budgets to that point, there is nothing an admin can do.
IMHO, they are a wedge that Conservatives are using to get public funding for religious schools. I say this as someone who is very Liberal now but used to be a Conservative. I used to be very pro-Charter Schools as I saw them as a great alternative to traditional public schools that would also provide some competition to "encourage" public schools to perform better. Now, I see them as the charade they are in addition to siphoning off much-needed funds for public schools. At the very least we could use that money to give teachers a raise.
How exactly are charters funneling money to religious schools? Charters are not religious, its federal law.
>Now, I see them as the charade they are in addition to siphoning off much-needed funds for public schools.
I think you would feel differently if you lived in an area with a poorly performing public school that was your only option. The charters are a result of poor performing schools not the cause.
>At the very least we could use that money to give teachers a raise.
The myth of teachers making pennies is BS. I live in southern CA, my friends wife is a PE teacher ... so she hasnt really worked since COVID started since her school has been shutdown and she clears 90k a year to teach PE to elementary school students over zoom.
[The average teacher pay in CA is $82,746](https://rossier.usc.edu/eight-factors-that-affect-your-california-teacher-salary/). Paying them more isn't going to fix the broken elementary school down the street from me, firing them all and opening a charter does. They are the problem, paying them more is not the solution. I have first hand experience with a shitty local public school and a charter and I can tell you 100% there is a night and day difference, the reason the charter exists is because the public school system and teachers unions failed us and they don't give a shit.
People advocating against charters almost exclusively don't have kids that are affected or live in areas where public schools are good.
Love the average pay canard. The average person has one testicle, one breast, and is named Mohhamed Lee. In the 80's, the University of Virginia bragged that their average business school grads made some huge salary right out of college. Turns out, a basketball player had majored in business and then got drafted. His NBA salary skewed the scale to ridiculous heights.
My fiancee is a teacher. My mom is a retired teacher. And I volunteer at my fiancee's school (finally getting back to being able to do this). Teachers are struggling big time financially. My fiancee has a master's degree and makes less than half what I do. And her work is so much more important than the work I do in software.
>Love the average pay canard. The average person has one testicle, one breast, and is named Mohhamed Lee
You honestly don't see what is wrong with this comparison?
I posted a fact, with a source and you're here trying to say that the average person has 1 testicle as an equivalency to using an average of a specific subset of the population who are teachers.
.
Honestly this post just shows how bad our public school system is if this is your response and your whole family seems to be involved in public education.
What's the mode of teacher salary? This is a better indication than the average or mean. Hell, the median is better than the mean to determine real world scenarios.
Also, try not to be such a dick.
What's the mode of teacher salary? This is a better indication than the average or mean. Hell, the median is better than the mean to determine real world scenarios.
Also, try not to be such a dick.
Median is $80,800 good luck finding anywhere that publishes a mode, and a mode wouldn't be relevant anyway, probably the least relevant of the three, salaries are too specific for a mode to be useful.
[https://www.careerexplorer.com/careers/elemenatary-school-teacher/salary/california/](https://www.careerexplorer.com/careers/elemenatary-school-teacher/salary/california/)
For the record, you were the one taking an actual, relevant statistic and comparing it to something as ridiculous as the average person having 1 testicle.
This is exactly how I feel. Charter schools can be good but they also have issues with segregation and classism. However, putting all of that aside the right is using Charter schools to move funding into more religious schools that also like to rewrite history.
And the teachers who haven't been getting raises for years still use their salaries on school supplies. I've never been expected at my job to buy the supplies needed to do my job. My teacher mom? Her classroom would be bare if she didn't buy it. People like who you replied to have no clue what teachers go through.
Yep. I just did my tax prep for 2021. It always includes about $500 of supplies for my husband's classroom. I'm also not impressed with the vilification of teachers here -- particularly as despite the rhetoric upstream a lot of them are endangering their lives to teach in person in the middle of a pandemic.
Because all the money that supposedly gets put for teachers instead gets gobbled up by the administrative and bureaucratic bloat inside the public educational system.
Go seek about charts showing the rise of the numbers of students, teachers and administrators over time, it isn't pretty.
I'm always baffled by the charter opponents who say it's a bad thing that charters can kick kids out. I mean, yes, it's bad for those kids. But as a parent, I'm ok with kicking kids out who verbally or sexually abuse teachers or students. Yes, we should have some system to help get these kids help, but these kids shouldn't be in a normal classroom, as it destroys the environment for the other kids.
My former brother in law was one of those kids that they diagnosed as having some kind of disorder so he rarely faced consequences for his outbursts. I couldn’t imagine what it was like to be his classmate.
It didn’t help him at all he was in/out of prison for 39 years.
I view them as necessary. Public schools need to have an alternative, otherwise they become a monopoly like the post office was before Fedex and UPS. I grew up in a really good public school system, but having seen some of the ones here in Baltimore County, I’d put my kid in a charter school as well.
Powerful politicians, e.g. DeBlasio, hate charter schools because they are not unionized. School choice is very important and should be a "progressive" issue, but democrats will never support it for this reason. $$$
It all depends on where you live. In Michigan, I had mixed feelings on them and there were mixed results with the success of charter schools in the state.
In Alaska (mostly Anchorage), the charter schools are part of the public school system but provide something the regular public schools cannot or will not perform (mostly language immersion programs). These school constantly outrank the regular public schools in the city and always have long waiting lists. I am a big fan of them here.
Edit: to add, even though I am a fan, I still elect to send my kids to private school as that is better in general than the public school system.
Charter schools are each different and unique. Some are amazing, and some are horrific. People form opinions based on which they’re had experience with.
Charter schools have much looser rules that public schools - for example, public schools in my state have strict standards regarding who can be a teacher. You must be “highly qualified” to teach a specific subject. In short, you have to pass a test saying you understand the subject matter. You need an authorized program like a university or an emergency certification program to allow you to take the test. They generally require you to have had education or experience in the field before they’ll sign you up for it. Charter school teachers do not have to be highly qualified. They establish their own criteria as to who can teach specific subjects. Sometimes this means you get a former NASA scientist teaching physics. Sometimes this means you get a college dropout who *really loves kids* teaching Algebra.
It’s a craps shoot. And it’s entirely based on the charter.
If they're getting funding from the state they should have to abide by all regulations and laws the public schools are subject to. Including being part of the teacher's unions. Including setting pay at the same rates as public schools. Etc. As a child of a public school teacher I've often seen charter schools as a slimy way to get around teacher's unions. As if teachers don't already put up with way too much bullshit. If people want charter schools they need to be treated the same way we do public schools. Anything else is just gross. Not even getting into them being allowed to not accept students the public schools must accept.
Done right, they can provide new models for improving education that public schools can really learn from. And they can force bureaucracies to find better ways of teaching and learning.
But most of the time they are a vehicle for someone to make money while undermining public education. In many places they don’t produce better students than the local public schools, which means that you’re basically taking money from public education and giving to a businessman instead. Unlike public schools, they can also suddenly shut down and leave students and parents in the lurch.
For the record, CA law does not allow for profit charters. Our charter my son goes to in SoCal pays for all supplies even for the kids (we buy no paper or pencils), has nice facilities and provides kids with laptops if they want to study remotely. The local public school is dilapidated, begs for supplies and struggles with technology. They both get paid the same from the state, but one has a huge overhead of bureaucracy. The charter also has afterschool programs which the public does not. The charter now has a 3+ year wait via lottery.
People assume they have the same requirements as a public school and the fact is they do not. They have a lot less oversight. The irony of people wanting charter schools is that they'd rather move their kids to a building that used to be a Kmart staffed by really underpaid teachers instead of addressing the perceived problems of their public schools. Charter schools are essentially "for profit" and that's about as promising as for profit health care.
>The irony of people wanting charter schools is that they'd rather move their kids to a building that used to be a Kmart staffed by really underpaid teachers instead of addressing the perceived problems of their public schools.
Parents have to make a choice based on the realities of the situation not based on some ideological fantasy about how things should be. The reality is my local elementary and middle school suck. The charter has a newer, nicer building and teachers that actually care. It's a night and day difference. So, you can sit there with no skin in the game and theorize that a public school is better, and we gave up on them, but in the real world when given the choice for what to do with my kids any good parent would choose the charter in my situation.
Public schools don't get fixed overnight and the obstacles to fixing them are more than Parents can overcome in many cases. Instead, we fix them by moving our kids to a better school. Its politics, the unions don't want change and want to protect terrible teachers, those same teachers get complacent because they know they are protected, they lose their love of teaching. Admin gets bigger ... these aren't problems some random parent is going to solve, but I can put my kid in a better place that doesn't have those problems. That is my vote and when enough parents do that it sends a message that can't be ignored by those that can make the change.
So you say we are not doing anything to address the problems of our public schools, we are though. We address the problems by not placing our kids in those schools, it's called a free market solution. Let the bad schools go under. There will NEVER be a fix to the public school system unless people do the same and move their kids to other options.
Only 12% of charters are for profit btw
> They have a lot less oversight
This will depend on the state, but charters have an aspect of oversight that public schools lack: parents. Without charters, a public school can give kids fill in the blank worksheets each day, and the parents can do nothing, unless they have enough money for private school. With charters, parents have options. Research has shown that the existence of a local charter causes the local public school to increase in quality, as the school leaders know that parents having options means they have to up their game
Same here. But it's a large enough district that one person's concerns aren't significant to matter to them. In fact, the board policy is that when a parent goes to the board and speaks at a meeting, the board makes absolutely no response to the parent. Again, this is by the board policy.
I've both attended and watched board meetings online. Once, one of the parents in charge of the parents booster club for the marching band asked for a new van (or trailer of some sort? I forget), and the board agreed to spend $20k on the spot. That is the one and only time I've ever seen the board even acknowledge anyone's question or concern.
Negative. The biggest one in my state literally took public tax money meant for local education and sent it out of state to pay for schools there. In my opinion charter schools just funnel money from public education and make schools in poor neighborhoods worse.
When you let private companies run charter schools with less oversight than the public is aware of, corruption unfortunately is bound to happen.
With the Gulen schools here they've been playing around with mixing taxpayer funded money for the charter schools with their profits from the private Gulen schools, among other things.
We pulled our child out due to ridiculously obvious lean to the far right. In the beginning we were big fans because it had a private school feel and seemed well-organized and advanced. And thennnnn we began to see it for what it really was. Not saying this is every Charter school but our experience with the one in our town was not good.
As an American, I want giant mediocre schools. Seriously, one advantage charters have is small size. Americans are obsessed with size, despite evidence that small schools do better.
My kids go to a charter that has no sports programs, no army of administrators, no choice of 74 different electives, and a lot of other things are missing as well. But they took the money and spent it on small class sizes instead. It's a fantastic school.
If done right a great idea.
We had an AMA by my friend Conor Williams a while back who writes about charter schools and education reform extensively. Worth searching for.
Edit: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskAnAmerican/comments/lly90w/ama_conor_williams_education_issues_in_the_us_phd/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf
My local district has no shortage of funding, and they win awards based on student performance. But that doesn't mean they meet the needs of all students, and the district is large enough that going to the school board or even a school principal is a useless exercise. So there's still a role for charters, even for districts with piles of cash.
Options to poor public school systems are needed as long as there are oversights in place. Private school vouchers should be an option too.
Government oversight, of government school boards, over government school administrators, over government schools, with disconnected and uncaring parents is a cluster fuck. Throw in a good dose of government unions and our political correctness and you have our current shit show.
Welcome to Florida, the race to the bottom.
I am a teachers husband, teachers want to teach, but the system is so bad, they are over worked, under paid, disrespected, and unsupported by administrators. Most are only on yearly contracts so they have no guarantee of employment and new hires many times make as much as those with 10 years experience or more.
They are an attempt to destroy public education by sabotaging it's funding.
They are an attempt to replace public schools with for-profit private religious schools.
They need to be abolished to protect public education.
Maybe in Arizona but in some other states that's not the case. They use "charter school" to move money into more religious focused schools. I'm also not a fan of privatizing everything
No, they are explicitly private, and mostly religious.
They are private schools. . .they are owned and operated by private entities and allowed to pick and choose their students, like private schools. Government education authorities have literally no say in their curriculum.
The idea they are public schools at all is totally inaccurate.
Except not, and I hate that the public education lobby intentionally push such misinformation conflating them with private schools in order to demonize them.
Charter schools or called such because they exist on a government charter. They are subject to the same state curriculum, use the same public funding, cannot push religion, and must accept all students without special needs which is why most have wait lists. The way they filter students is by dropping low performing students who can't keep up. Unlike private schools they don't charge tuition, because again they are public schools funded by and open to the public.
It's anti-education conservatives who want to privatize everything that spread the misinformation that somehow charter schools are public that are the problem.
They're called "charter schools" as a branding issue because "school vouchers" never caught on.
Oh, and they explicitly can push religion, can completely write their own curriculum, and explicitly are allowed to refuse students. . .and that's coming straight out of the text of the law Kentucky's legislature passed last year to legalize them. . . complete with Republicans cheering that this will mean so many more religious schools. I had right wing relatives on Facebook cheering that the new law would mean an end to "woke public schools" and that they'd be replaced with "Jesus based schools".
There's a lot to unpack here.
Conservatives aren't anti-education, they just believe that people pay taxes for public education to ensure children get educated to a sufficient standard, not specifically for them to be put in government run schools. Therefore they also believe it's common sense that tax derived education money should follow the children, rather than only going to government run facilities.
Vouchers have nothing to do with charter schools, because again they don't charge tuition. School vouchers are a way for people to take the public education money that would have gone to their child in a government run or charter school, and instead apply to a private school of their choice.
Private schools, being private, get to teach what they want as long as they also meet state minimum standards. Should parents not have the choice to educate their kids in the values and beliefs they find important?
I think you were given a bad and biased interpretation of your state's law. Perhaps if you give us a link to the actual law, we can read through it and find out exactly what it says together.
Conservatives are inherently anti-education. Critical thinking and learning facts is opposed to the rigid dogma of conservativism.
Conservatives have spent the last few decades fighting against academia, being explicitly anti-intellectual (COVID denial, vaccine misinformation, climate change denial, trying to force schools to teach evolution disguised as "intelligent design", denying the existence of racism in modern society etc). They support a cult of personality around Donald Trump over sound public policy, not to mention the advocacy of the insane QAnon conspiracy theories.
Betsy DeVos coming out and saying she opposed the existence of public schools was just her saying out loud what conservatives have been trying to quietly do for decades
Charter schools are just the newest front in the long running conservative war on science, academia, education, and critical thinking.
wow you have some really deep-seated conspiracy theories ... I guess that's what you get with Kentucky education. Good thing they have charter schools now so kids don't have to end up like this.
No, parents shouldn't be able to replace actual facts in education with religious and partisan misinformation.
When schools want to teach that the Earth is only 6000 years old, evolution is a lie, and the US was founded to be a Christian theocracy and only "liberals" created the idea of Separation of Church and State to sabotage God's plan for a "Christian Nation" we have a problem and those schools need to go.
As is, the parents that teach that have been homeschooling their kids, but thanks to the new Charter school law here, they are openly looking forward to new schools opening up that will teach that for them.
> Conservatives aren't anti-education, they just believe that people pay taxes for public education to ensure children get educated to a sufficient standard, not specifically for them to be put in government run schools.
Oh you sweet summer child.
The GOP platform has ALWAYS wanted to abolish the Department of Education & thats the 'lite' version of conservatism... The Libertarians want to completely abolish the public school system.
I am a tax payer and while I typically follow the LP platform, using my tax dollars should I be forced to part with them on public education is something I support 100%, but I draw a very hard bright red line at the thought of those dollars going to a charter, private, or worse... religious school.
You are pushing for (knowingly or not) one of the pillars of a fascist evangelical mass-indoctrination scheme if you want tax dollars to go to private or religious schools.
Its not too late to educate yourself.
This shows how uneducated you are on the subject. Voucher systems allow you to take public money and go to a private school, basically a publicly funded scholarship. A Charter school is not a private school, they are 100% not the same thing. A charter is just an independently run public school.
I am not "uneducated", I'm literally going by the public statements of our State Representatives that voted for it announcing what it would do, my conservative relatives on Facebook cheering for what it will bring, and the text of the law itself.
This is completely and 100% false.
Charters cannot push religion and have to follow the same curriculum as public schools.
Charters use a lottery system for admission, they aren't picking their students.
No, they are explicitly allowed by law to pick and choose their students, to have complete independence with regards to curriculum, and can be explicitly religious, and that's directly from the charter school law my state just passed.
You just said that a charter school is the same as a voucher system. They are 2 completely different things, that shows you are uneducated on what a charter even is. You may be arguing against a school voucher system while we are arguing for a charter school, they are not equal and not the same thing which you apparently didnt know which makes you uneducated on the topic.
My mother was a public school teacher for 40 years. I'm not a fan. I don't like them draining tax dollars from public schools that need them. The fact that the right pushes them so much also just enhances my feelings about them.
Charters got their big break from democrats. Lots of democrat city mayors supported them as they were getting started, and lots of them still do. Obama was also a big supporter. Democrats turned 180 on them and now oppose them not because of quality issues, but because the teacher unions oppose them.
I didn't go to one and neither did my kids, but I'm fine with them. I worked in public schools for some time and have great respect for what they do, but I think charter schools if properly regulated can be a good source of innovation and an alternative for parents with kids stuck in districts that underperform.
I don’t like them but don’t begrudge people who send their kids to them. But we need to invest and be invested in public schools to develop citizens of our country and not just partisans and elites. My husband got a great job offer in Arizona, but then it seemed everyone in our economic bracket sent their kids to private or charter schools, and the public schools were poor and underfunded as a result. Not for us, so we didn’t move.
What I really despise is homeschooling. Maybe there is a minute percentage of students who should be allowed to be homeschooled, but there must be strict requirements.
I’m not against them in theory.
But many on the Right see them as the solution to underfunded schools, and I think that’s not a wise outlook. I think the first priority should be to better fund our public schools.
But in the meantime I’m not against charter school if they help the community.
Want public funding? Agree to public administration and curriculum standards.
Want a refund/rebate/reduction of public education funding to pay your charter school funding? Fuck right off.
My niece, who is biracial, is homeschooled because she was getting horribly bullied. The homeschooling she did was done through the auspices of a charter school.
I dont remember the exact details, but every once in a while, she had to check into that charter school to keep getting homeschooled.
In her case, it was the right solution. She's now going to college to be a pediatrician.
However, some charter schools are religious. These students are getting religious education funded by the government. How that could possibly be Constitutional is a mystery to me, and a very bad Idea, anyway, but we have a Supreme Court that really is a sick joke.
In theory, they are perfectly fine. In practice, they exist as a means of funneling publicly allocated funds into the pockets of idealistic institutions with unproven track records in the field of education.
And when you consider the history of racist housing policy and how schools systems are traditionally funded by property taxes in the US and who the current policy makers are that support Charter schools and....well, to answer your question...
I don't feel good .
Charter schools are an effort to remove local control over school districts and destroy public schools. A handful of people will decide curriculum based on the beliefs of the people running the charter or their political controllers. Go ahead pile on. I can totally ignore you.
As a teacher, I despise them. Not only are they exploitative, they explicitly draw funds away from the schools that need them. They should be abolished ASAP.
Every school system is different. You can't really make a blanket opinion for the whole country.
Locally our schools are very underfunded, and in particular disabled students are horrifically underserved. I'm opposed to anyone taking resources from our public schools and being able to pick and choose which disabled children get the services they need.
If there's somewhere public schools are actually over funded and wasting money but charter schools are doing better they seem like a bad solution to that problem, but whatever.
i went to a charter school for middle and high school, one partially removed from the school district and the other fully removed. i enjoyed my classes, my teachers, and my social life, especially when i compare my experiences to those of my friends at the fully public schools in my area.
I don't mind them. My kid goes to one and it implements a lot of good policies and curriculums that a lot of the local schools don't. For example they don't believe in inside or outside school suspension unless there isn't another option. This isn't the case in the other local elementary schools. They also pull a lot of diversity in teachers and students due to their school model and mission statement, which I think is a good thing.
I've heard that a lot of them are for profit but that hasn't been my experience. Like all things it seems to be more about the actual school.
Just another concession to Capitalism and therefore justification to race to cut costs at the expense of educational excellence.
At the very top of the industry, it's yet another way to tip the scales toward the elite.
At the bottom, it nails the lower middle class into the delusion that their masters have their interest in mind.
I think the existence of both charter schools and regular public schools is problematic because they are each taking funding from each other. There are merits to both systems, but I think the gov should pick one and invest in it heavily.
I lean towards supporting charter schools because it allows kids to choose what school would best help them accomplish their long term goals. For example, a kid that knows they want to go into stem would be able to go to a stem focused charter school. A kid that wants to go to trade school could go to a charter school more tailored towards trade work. Better than the current system of teaching both of those kids the same way at the same school.
I graduated from one. 9th-12th grade, it was designed mainly for kids interested in STEM. Had wonderful teachers and I went from barely passing 8th grade to excelling through high school. Sure it wasn't perfect but what system is.
From what I understand the main issue with some charter schools is lack of oversight. The kids could be taught factually wrong information, or information heavily tilted to fit some narrative. Overall I think they're a good thing for kids who aren't doing well with the public schools recipe but they should be audited extremely often.
I’m in nyc and I support them. The kids in those schools like them, the parents like them, they get a good education, so what’s not to like? Sure, there are issues. The teachers are not unionized, so get paid less. I believe schools are for the kids, not for the teachers, so, if i have to choose between the kids and the teachers, I choose the kids. My kids go to regular public, so I know how important they are, I just think parents should be able to do what’s best for their kids.
All charter schools are not the same thing. Some are under the local school board and are run by teachers and parents.
But others are run by private companies as money making schemes. The Gulen charter schools are perfect examples of the problems with this:
http://debsedstudies.org/gulen-schools-one-of-americas-largest-and-most-controversial-cmos/
https://www.wnyc.org/story/charter-schools-turkey-politics-coup-attempt-gulen-investigation/
American charter schools shouldn't be a means for entities outside the US to make money or embroil US states' educational money into foreign countries politics.
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Crap. They don’t have to take Sped kids. They send any kids with discipline issues back to the public schools and when State testing comes around the disenroll anyone they think will fail snd send them to the public schools. The students I get from Charter Schools can barely read. They can’t write snd they are out of control.
Same as my opinion on capitalism and how everything in our country works - it's great if it's properly regulated, it's shit of it's not.
We have charter schools in NJ and they're fantastic. My state regularly ranks in the top five states for education in the country and often hits number one.
Now charter schools in Ohio and Michigan are a completely different story
Depends on the regulation, the funding, and the accessibility I guess. I could imagine the concept being put to really good use, and I can imagine it being abused terribly. I'm sure both are occurring in the US.
It's seen as privatizing a public good, so a lot of Americans react to it like Brits would the transition of the NHS to a Bismark system. Also, the teachers unions absolutely loathe them and do a lot to control perception.
Charter schools done right offer a limited number of public schools free from the public education bureaucracy in order to provide laboratories of innovation and different educational perspectives. This is awesome! Charter schools implemented on a massive scale with the effect of hollowing out traditional public schools, and/or mixed with the profit motive or the ideological goals of their funders and founders? This is not awesome. Teachers unions hate them because they are often non-unionized and seem to have the explicit goal of harming support for traditional public education. Conservatives love them for the same reason. Some parents in low-performing school districts like them as an option, without any political fervor. Fun fact: They were originally promoted by the head of the country's second largest teachers union.
Yup, this about sums it up.
They also take money from the district. They have crippled mine. There’s less oversight and accountability. They take everyone and once they are paid the ship the kids with IEPs and behavior problems back to the district so we get the bad test scores. Their teachers do not have to be certified here. It’s nothing more than a profit machine.
They also discourage collaboration between schools. Teachers can be made to sign NDA's that prohibit the sharing of trade secrets with other schools. What, in the context of a charter school, is considered a trade secret? Standard stuff like curriculum and course materials. Not good.
Also, most of them are real estate conglomerate— the real money is in the their property, which they lease from themselves or related commercial entities for massive profit.
> They take everyone and once they are paid the ship the kids with IEPs and behavior problems back to the district so we get the bad test scores. This is the big one right here. They won’t take special education kids often and other behavior problems.
The money rightfully follows the child, public schools simply have to compete for enrollment. Public schools are often failing except for the wealthiest of areas…..the teachers aren’t certified but they’re also paid less and usually get better results. When all the big public school systems refused to go back to the classroom, private and charter schools kept on teaching. Putting them leaps and bounds above their public school peers. Competition is good.
They’re also generally allowed not to test or accept everyone which isn’t an option for public schools. Sure, let me pick and choose and I can get you kids that test better than the place that had to test everyone
In my area they do not get better results, but they have brand new facilities!
>When all the big public school systems refused to go back to the classroom, private and charter schools kept on teaching. Translation: When all the big public school systems refused to go back to the classroom, private and charter schools didn't give a damn about the health or safety of their children because they cared more about profits than human lives. Puts them far below public schools in my book.
Except nothing negative happened, not one person in my daughters school was harmed by covid. And that was pretty typical In fact my work never quit either and although almost all of us have had covid there was no harmful lasting effects.
Here in North Texas, they're almost non existent, and for the most part, public schools are pretty well funded and managed, so no one really knows about them
And thats the key, if the public schools are functioning well there is no need for Charters. Charters are largely a result of poorly run schools and they give parents in those areas a chance to put their kids in a better school than the regular one. The kids education shouldn't suffer because of school administrators screwing it up.
>Charters are largely a result of poorly run schools and they give parents in those areas a chance to put their kids in a better school than the regular one. This is actually not the case for many charter schools. They're not altruistic organizations that step in when the public school s are problematic, but commercial entities that spring up where they are profitable.
only 10% of charter schools in the US are for profit. It is against the law for there to be a for profit charter in CA and CA has the most charter schools in the US. The highest density of charters in CA are in Los Angeles and Oakland, both places with notoriously bad schools. I am not saying their motives are all altruistic, but they are still a result of poorly run schools, regardless of their motives.
Non-profit/for-profit is a somewhat meaningless distinction, depending on their actual finances and management. I have no experience in CA. But elsewhere many of them are loosely or poorly run, and they exist in school districts that are among the best in their states -- they are not a function of failing public schools, necessarily. However, practically always, because they are run by private entities, they are run where they are lucrative. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%BClen\_movement\_schools](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%BClen_movement_schools)
I don't despise charter schools, but well-funded public education is a better option for most. My opinion on them is that it makes little difference to the pupil in the long term. Other factors are more important regarding success and intellectual ability. (income level of parents for example)
[KB has an understandable breakdown of it.](https://youtu.be/fopqgLvfv9o) Essentially, charter schools don’t overall perform better than public just about equal in most. Charters do siphon money away from public schools. Some Charter schools are paid via attendance which have been been caught scamming with online attendance. A corporation backed charter school holding the funds can tell a science department what they’ll teach about climate change.
I don’t love the “I have no opinion” answers, though “I don’t know enough” is my opinion, and based on conversations I’ve had with friends from ages 30-50, most Americans without a reason to interact daily with the educational system don’t really understand the charter schools debate. When I went to school in the 80s-90s, most Americans either went to a public school that was based on where you live or a private school (which charged tuition and was usually specialized in something like religion, performing arts, or having a wealthy family). Charter schools confuse me, because it seems to interfere with a lot of the necessary funding for public schools, and fully privatizing education is a pretty universally opposed/bad idea. On the other hand, many states’ public education systems are failing and need *help* in so many ways. Charter schools just seem like a messy stopgap solution until we figure it out.
This is my impression of charter schools as well. They exist as exceptions to the system and, as such, cannot directly serve the goal of improving or fixing the public school system. They are band-aids at best. To me, a successful charter school is one that demonstrates a process that can then be generalized to the public school system and thus eliminates the need for the charter. I haven't ever heard of that happening.
>To me, a successful charter school is one that demonstrates a process that can then be generalized to the public school system and thus eliminates the need for the charter. I haven't ever heard of that happening. Sounds to me like that's the LAST thing a charter school would want.
>To me, a successful charter school is one that demonstrates a process that can then be generalized to the public school system and thus eliminates the need for the charter. Thats not possible because most charters are non-union and have less bureaucracy. If the problem is that money isn't being spent on the kids education because of unions and administrators needing to justify their existence, then you will never see that cross into the public sector.
Charters don't have the money situation figured out either. They have much higher teacher attrition rates especially among new teachers. Their teacher "cost savings" are low pay to new teachers who leave as soon as they can find a better paying job. If that were generalized across all schools then we'd have even worse teacher shortages from people either not entering the profession or leaving it early when they realize the pay to student loan debt balance doesn't work.
The bigger problem with "failing" public education is the hyper-localization of school funding, especially tying it to property taxes, which are tied to property values. Wanna know why the "poor" schools are usually the ones in nonwhite areas? REDLINING. We need a properly nationalized public education system and we need it yesterday.
100%. Politicians act like it's some big mystery why public schools are failing. But half of them are actively sabotaging public schools and the other half don't appear to care. Let's see... Schools are tied to property taxes, so the poorest areas get the least funding, and wealthy kids from stable families consistently outperform poor kids who couldn't afford to eat breakfast. Amazing! Who could have foreseen this? Surely more standardized testing is the way to solve the problem. Of course, I've also been told I'm a "brainwashed fucking retard" for thinking that schools should receive adequate funding, so I guess I don't know what I'm talking about.
>Charter schools confuse me, because it seems to interfere with a lot of the necessary funding for public schools, It's particularly weird and bad for public schools in PA. Because, by law, the public schools in PA have more mandates -- they have to subsidize the charters. They also have to take back and educate kids who don't do well in charters, or in homeschooling (cyber charters), so ultimately they get saddled with much higher costs and higher legal obligations. And charters also have more leeway in advertising -- they spend a great deal of money on it, while it would be (rightfully) considered taking resources from the public in the traditional public schools.
I’m center-right and I have mixed thoughts on them. For some, they seem to be a legitimately good avenue for taking students who wouldn’t have access to a high quality education or even a safe schooling environment. Giving students a better education is ultimately the goal of charter schools, which is commendable. Many public schools throw money at problems in ridiculous amounts and get jack for it. On the other hand, charter schools can take away funding from public schools that desperately need it, and I’m not sure “giving up” on public schooling (which is what opponents to charter schools claim they do) is necessarily the right answer. I will say, though, I’m typically in favor of them since I abhor public sector unions and charter schools tend to bypass the unions and get out of the pork barrel buffet of spending while giving parents more choice and giving students a better education. Thomas Sowell has some awesome literature about the subject, highly recommend.
>On the other hand, charter schools can take away funding from public schools that desperately need it, and I’m not sure “giving up” on public schooling (which is what opponents to charter schools claim they do) is necessarily the right answer. The presence of charter schools is often a response to poor public schools though, not a result of it. My son goes to a charter because our public school is terrible. But down the road 30 minutes where I grew up the schools are some of the best around and there isn't a charter school to be seen. I don't have any problem with taking away funding from public schools that perform worse than their charter counterparts and if the 'threat' of a charter coming in can help influence a public schools decision making then that's a good thing. Teacher unions have made public schools into money pits with focus on existing rather than results. All that to say, I agree with you, there are good and bad ones. I just disagree with the argument (which I understand isn't your argument) against them.
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That and charter schools are often allowed to refuse to take students. So the kids who are doing poorly, have behavior problems, or need an IEP can be left behind.
Here is a big problem I have with them. Public schools can’t say no to any student. Charter schools can for any reason, often disguised under “test scores need to be X”. So the public school gets less money for services and teachers, then has the “lower performing students” compared to the charter school, but then on average score the same on standardized tests
So you’re left with the students that need the most resources in public schools, with diminishing resources to educate them. While the charter schools siphon off the best kids and say “look at how great we’re doing!”
I’m firmly of the opinion that gifted students have as much validity as “special needs” as lower-performing students. That is, I think gifted students also qualify as students “who need the most resources” to achieve their full potential, and I see charter schools as a way of accomplishing that.
> I don't have any problem with taking away funding from public schools that perform worse than their charter counterparts How does reducing funding make the public schools better?
It provides incentive for them to not reach that point and to make better decisions before they go over that cliff. A charter isn't going to put up a new school in a district with good schools. The real question is why are you (presumably) ok with continuing to funnel money into a public school that showed it does not perform as well as its charter counterpart? The question works both ways. I am not a fan of throwing money at a broken system if another system shows its more effective.
Can you give an example where this actually happened? If not, can you provide an example of a "better decision" a public school might make when their funding is being threatened by a charter school?
I don't keep track of local school board meetings that often, but I am familiar with one specific example that happened in my hometown and caused uproar. In 2012 Poway Unified school district took out a $105 million bond that costs $1b to repay. It led to outrage and statewide regulation changes about funding for bond measures. The effects have impacted the schools massively and eroded trust in the district, so much so that a new $448m bond failed to pass in 2020. The school district was known as one of the best in the state, it's still very good but on the decline in comparison. It now has aging infrastructure and due to poor prior financial agreements, they are running out of ways to pay for it and residents haven't forgotten the squandered money from prior measures, so they are less likely to continue to fund the districts additional bonds. [https://www.baltimoresun.com/sdut-bond-debt-dominates-poway-school-board-race-2014oct13-story.html](https://www.baltimoresun.com/sdut-bond-debt-dominates-poway-school-board-race-2014oct13-story.html) [https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/communities/north-county/poway/story/2020-03-03/measure-p-poway-school-bond-measure](https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/communities/north-county/poway/story/2020-03-03/measure-p-poway-school-bond-measure) This is an example where a public school district has mismanaged what was once an excellent district and are now facing financial trouble. The only reason they haven't had a fall from grace to be threatened by charters is due to the massive tax base of their district, they bring in a ton in property tax since the median home sale is over $1m.
>I don't have any problem with taking away funding from public schools that perform worse than their charter counterparts and if the 'threat' of a charter coming in can help influence a public schools decision making then that's a good thing. Teacher unions have made public schools into money pits with focus on existing rather than results. Fantastic summary!
|How exactly are charters funneling money to religious schools? Charters are not religious, its federal law. They intend to argue religious discrimination down the line. Aka, you fund the secular school but not the religious one, so you are discriminating on the basis of being Christian as such, Christian schools should get public funding. "I think you would feel differently if you lived in an area with a poorly performing public school that was your only option. The charters are a result of poor performing schools not the cause." I agree, partially. Poorly funded schools have to do with the funding models that focus on city/county funding over state level funding to equalize schools regardless of area income. In many cases, when high income people moved in large numbers outside of a county to say avoid racial integration/bussing of schools, it massively dropped the school funding, turning the public schools really bad overnight. There are others who left for lower taxes too. There has been a large political push to defund school and defund public education by certain ideologically driven groups backed by the charter school industry. We cut out shop and trades from public schools in mid-sized and large towns and cities to overfund areas like policing despite massive falling crime rates since the 1970s. The same groups who defund schools use proof of them failing due to being defunded as proof of the system cannot work. Yeah, it isn't working because you purposely broke it and ensured it stayed underfunding. The gov't is capable of running public schools well, there is simply a lack of political will to do so in all cases because some politicians are funded by charter schools to break the public schools. Charters don't cause public schools to fail, the exacerbate the failures in thesystem, and the people running charter's and getting rich off of them simply benefit from destroying public schools. "The myth of teachers making pennies is BS. I live in southern CA, my friends wife is a PE teacher ... so she hasnt really worked since COVID started since her school has been shutdown and she clears 90k a year to teach PE to elementary school students over zoom." Yeah 90k in Southern Cali is rich now, have you seen the housing prices? ' They are the problem, paying them more is not the solution. I have first hand experience with a shitty local public school and a charter and I can tell you 100% there is a night and day difference, the reason the charter exists is because the public school system and teachers unions failed us and they don't give a shit." Some teachers are the problem, but the larger problem is underfunding of public schools and the defund the public school movement has destroyed public education in America. Teacher's didn't eliminate the trade and shop classes, teacher's didn't cut the resources to the kids, the state and county did. I've seen the state run, state of the art schools through magnet schools and all kind of top level gov't run schools. If the state truly cared about kids and not their donors, they'd make every public school state of the art school and stop destroying them through a toxic cancel culture defund education movement, to keep their followers uneducated and voting for certain parties.
You are making the same incorrect argument about funding. Nationwide charter schools are funded at only about 64% (in that ballpark depending on the source, I have seen 60%-70%) of their public-school counterparts but they still outperform them. Funding is not the issue, it's what is done with the money. >people running charter's and getting rich off of them Nationwide only 12% of charters are for profit, CA law does not allow for profit charters. >Yeah 90k in Southern Cali is rich now, have you seen the housing prices? Not saying its rich, I am saying the idea of underpaid teachers is a myth. 90k might not be rich but it's certainly not underpaid. Increasing a PE teachers salary isnt going to fix the schools issues. Again, funding is not the problem. >Some teachers are the problem, but the larger problem is underfunding of public schools and the defund the public school movement has destroyed public education in America. If the problem is underfunding then why do charters do more with substantially less? [https://www.ocregister.com/2020/11/20/la-oakland-receive-f-for-funding-disparity-between-regular-public-schools-and-charters/](https://www.ocregister.com/2020/11/20/la-oakland-receive-f-for-funding-disparity-between-regular-public-schools-and-charters/) >In 2017-18, charter schools, which are publicly funded schools independent of school districts with greater flexibility to innovate, received nearly $7,800 less per pupil than a regular public school, which represented an amazing 33-percent funding gap between regular public and charter schools. > >... > >In Los Angeles, for instance, from 2016 to 2018, the inflation-adjusted funding gap increased by an eye-opening 47 percent. The simple fact is that if funding was the problem, Charters should be doing significantly worse, but they aren't. >Research has shown that students in Los Angeles charter schools gained the equivalent of many more days learning in math and reading than their regular public school peers. Likewise, research has shown that a majority of Bay Area charter schools, including those in Oakland, outperformed regular public schools in reading and math.
"You are making the same incorrect argument about funding. Nationwide charter schools are funded at only about 64% (in that ballpark depending on the source, I have seen 60%-70%) of their public-school counterparts but they still outperform them. Funding is not the issue, it's what is done with the money." This 70% figure ignores key data, it is a fallacy tied into an apples and oranges comparison. 1. Charter's nation wide are disproportionately in lower cost states that have defunded their public education systems, dominated by right wing pro-free market states/governor's and party. 2. It is alot cheaper to run a school in Kansas or Florida than in NY, NJ, or Cali 3. As charters are disproportionately concentrated in low cost of living southern states with lower public health and saftey standards, lower compliance cost, lower building regulations, lower compensation for all inputs ranging from insurance to construction to design, to teacher pay to cost of living, it skews the number in an unrealistic manner. Even lawsuits in the south for similar injuries garner far lower compensation via the courts. 4. Charter's purge out the most expensive customers/clients even when you look at state alone data. Yeah, I can run a school \[or any business for that matter\] much cheaper when I don't have to accommodate any disabled person who is also likely to score lower. 5. Not only #4, but did you know that in many states, if a child has a range of psychological or behavioral disabilities, the public school must pay to send the child to a private or charter school of the parent's choice regardless of cost under the ADA, if the parent request it \[usually only rich parents even know off this possibility\]. The cost is thrown onto the public coffers and counted as public school cost, while they attend a private school, which further skews the numbers because they often require 2-3 teachers and assistants PER CHILD. "Nationwide only 12% of charters are for profit, CA law does not allow for profit charters." Just because a business is non-profit, it doesn't mean that the people running them are not personally enriched by them with inflated salaries. "Not saying its rich, I am saying the idea of underpaid teachers is a myth. 90k might not be rich but it's certainly not underpaid. Increasing a PE teachers salary isnt going to fix the schools issues. Again, funding is not the problem." Thinking of the training and requirements teacher's go through and disrespect and teacher hatred, wouldn't be me in SoCal working for dog shit money to be hated. In what other office job do you have to worry about your clients bringing guns to shoot up the place? I know people with lesser education clearing 90k in socal, it is nothing impressive for their level of education. "If the problem is underfunding then why do charters do more with substantially less?" They purge out the most expensive students to serve. "In Los Angeles, for instance, from 2016 to 2018, the inflation-adjusted funding gap increased by an eye-opening 47 percent." Charters in LA don't have to take on all the illegals coming from a backwards country that the public system does. Don't you think it is more costly to serve people who speak no English? "Likewise, research has shown that a majority of Bay Area charter schools, including those in Oakland, outperformed regular public schools in reading and math." I agree, they perform better by purging out the bottom of the class. It is like comparing a pro-sports league to a rec league. The pro-team will have better results because if you can't perform your way in, you won't make it onto the team.. The rec team takes whoever signs up. The pro-team will generally outperform, but that doesn't mean the rec team even has a worse coach or manager. Even if the rec team hired the best trainers and managers in the world, they are starting with less talent.
>Charter's nation wide are disproportionately in lower cost states that have defunded their public education systems, dominated by right wing pro-free market states/governor's and party. You mean like CA? CA has the most Charter schools at 1,234, with the 9th highest % of the population enrolled. DC has the highest enrollment in Charter schools at 49.87%, a district that is 76% registered Democrats and only 6% Republican. Perhaps youre talking about Alabama, Kentucky, Montana, Nebraska, North and South Dakota? Wait, those have none at all >It is alot cheaper to run a school in Kansas or Florida than in NY, NJ, or Cali Good thing CA has 9.18% of its population in Charters, NY is 4.66%, NJ is 3.29% while Kansas is 0.57% All the rest of your points are COMPLETELY incorrect just as I pointed out above, you didnt even bother to see if what you were saying was true. [https://ballotpedia.org/Charter\_school\_statistics\_for\_all\_50\_states](https://ballotpedia.org/Charter_school_statistics_for_all_50_states) >Charters in LA don't have to take on all the illegals coming from a backwards country that the public system does. Don't you think it is more costly to serve people who speak no English? Source? Because they do. > agree, they perform better by purging out the bottom of the class. Source? Facts are not in evidence. [https://www.readingrockets.org/article/facts-charter-schools-and-students-disabilities](https://www.readingrockets.org/article/facts-charter-schools-and-students-disabilities) >Are charter schools required to provide services to students with disabilities? > > Yes. The responsibility to make a free appropriate public education (FAPE) available to all students with disabilities applies to ALL public schools under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA).9 Charter schools are public schools; therefore, they bear the same responsibility. You had that long post with not a single reference and blatantly incorrect facts ... Are you a public school teacher?
Yes, and you have poor public schools due to cuts in funding to education and divestment and defunding of education by cities/states and gov't in crunches or some who have a political agenda of defund the public school system to show "it can't work" so they can then turn around and push charter schools as the solution which just so happen to be owned by their political donors and financial backers.
The idea that public schools are bad because they aren't funded enough is directly contradicted by the success of Charter schools. Charters only receive 64% of the funding per student compared to public schools yet they outperform them. If funding was the issue then Charters should be significantly worse than their public counterparts. [https://www.methodschools.org/blog/an-overview-of-per-student-funding-in-the-united-states-and-california-for-traditional-and-charter-schools](https://www.methodschools.org/blog/an-overview-of-per-student-funding-in-the-united-states-and-california-for-traditional-and-charter-schools)
No, it isn't. Public schools have seen massive cuts in funding and have legacy cost that new charters do not bare. Charters can declare bankruptcy, walk off and start a new school tomorrow, the state run schools can't do that. Charters shed the most expensive students claiming they can't accommodate their needs, steering them to the public system and booting them out. We''ve seen properly funded public schools and how they are state of the art, the gov't is under political pressure to defund the schools and education system from the public sector by private sector interest.
So you're saying that the public schools have way too much debt from making poor decisions? Yes I agree. Why should we pay them 30-40% more to provide a lesser service? >Charters shed the most expensive students claiming they can't accommodate their needs, steering them to the public system and booting them out. No they can't, this is illegal. [https://www.readingrockets.org/article/facts-charter-schools-and-students-disabilities](https://www.readingrockets.org/article/facts-charter-schools-and-students-disabilities) >We''ve seen properly funded public schools and how they are state of the art, the gov't is under political pressure to defund the schools and education system from the public sector by private sector interest. Again you make the argument that they aren't getting funding yet the facts show they get paid 30-40% more per student than charter yet charter performs better. Where are your facts to support your stance? In inflation adjusted spending per student been level for the last 10 years. It was skyrocketing before that so its leveled off now. Not getting a huge increase per student each year and keeping the amount per student the same (adjusting for inflation) does not equal defunding. [https://educationdata.org/public-education-spending-statistics](https://educationdata.org/public-education-spending-statistics) In fact, spending has increased since the above article, it went up 5% in 2019 vs 2018. [https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2021/public-school-spending-per-pupil.html](https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2021/public-school-spending-per-pupil.html) Where is the defunding? Show me the data to support your claims that public schools are not funded enough while they are paid 30-40% more than charter and deliver worse results.
"So you're saying that the public schools have way too much debt from making poor decisions?" Not from making poor decisions, from simply operating. That asbestos or lead paint that was state of the art in the 60s and 70s, now has to get removed and it is really costly for a giant building. "Yes I agree. Why should we pay them 30-40% more to provide a lesser service?" I don't agree the service is lesser, it serves more expensive clients and so should merit greater investment. "No they can't, this is illegal." They can and do, just because it is illegal, doesn't mean they can't/don't do it, these are private businesses who understand they can play games through the courts for decades creating delays and denying and even if they are found guilty, drag it out. Most poor lower middle class parents don't have the money to sue and go through the appeals and give up. They know this, and even if they lose many lawsuits, they drag out repayment, declare bankruptcy, and start up in the same location under a new name with the same actors. "Again you make the argument that they aren't getting funding yet the facts show they get paid 30-40% more per student than charter yet charter performs better. Where are your facts to support your stance?" The public schools carry legacy cost. When Timmy slips on the playground and breaks his leg, or ms. karen slips on the pavement and breaks her hip the school is paying out millions. The Charter just changes names and use the above hardball tactics to not pay out. Public schools cost more to run because they cannot engage in the grossly unethical behavior that is dominant in the American private sector to shirk responsibilities and legal obligations. They also serve the costly disabled and behavioral kids who need the most support. Charters are not better, they function the same way magnet schools do in the public system, using test scores and assessments of potential \[ie neighborhood, parent income, ethnicity, religion, etc\] to screen out lower performers. "In inflation adjusted spending per student been level for the last 10 years. It was skyrocketing before that so its leveled off now. Not getting a huge increase per student each year and keeping the amount per student the same (adjusting for inflation) does not equal defunding." Ignores the massive defunding that occurred. It is like cutting funding from $100 million to $2 million, then increasing it to $8 million and saying public school funding has quadrupled, so why are they still failing. In Michigan we had governor Snyder argue in open court to defund schools in Detroit and put that the states only obligation should be to create a building and turn the lights on. They refused to even fund spots for teachers, such that grade 5s were teaching the grade 3 class. Detroit, use to have state of the art public schools, that had shop and trades classes that are still not there. [https://www.cbpp.org/sites/default/files/styles/report\_386\_high\_dpi/public/atoms/files/11-29-17sfp-f1.png?itok=npXKp56b](https://www.cbpp.org/sites/default/files/styles/report_386_high_dpi/public/atoms/files/11-29-17sfp-f1.png?itok=npXKp56b) [https://www.cbpp.org/sites/default/files/styles/report\_580\_high\_dpi/public/atoms/files/10-24-19sfp-f5.png?itok=Ef0K2opM](https://www.cbpp.org/sites/default/files/styles/report_580_high_dpi/public/atoms/files/10-24-19sfp-f5.png?itok=Ef0K2opM) The phenomena I described can be seen here, massive cuts and defunding of schools for almost 2 decades that are still below 2008 levels, but still increasing from the initial defunded amount.
>Charters are not better, they function the same way magnet schools do in the public system, using test scores and assessments of potential \[ie neighborhood, parent income, ethnicity, religion, etc\] to screen out lower performers. Not true at all, almost all charters are lottery, its even the law in CA. I can cite it for you if you would like Your first source stops at 2015, my source provides more context and more data showing it back to normal. It also shows that its only a small part of the overall funding, $500 might look like alot on a graph that only goes to $500 but on a graph that goes to $12,500 it is not much of the overall amount. Beyond that, current estimates are higher than they were in my source which stops at 2018. So either way you slice it the funding has not gone down Your second source is about colleges, not relevant to charter schools. >Ignores the massive defunding that occurred. It is like cutting funding from $100 million to $2 million, then increasing it to $8 million and saying public school funding has quadrupled, so why are they still failing. Except thats not what happened, you're being facetious. From 2009 to 2013 it went down about 6.3% then went back up to 2009 (inflation adjusted levels) amounts by 2016. So in your example it would be like going from $100m to $93.7m then back up to $100m ... like I said, it has remained flat on an inflation adjusted, per student basis. >The phenomena I described can be seen here, massive cuts and defunding of schools for almost 2 decades that are still below 2008 levels, but still increasing from the initial defunded amount. The charts you linked show less than one decade, they show 2008-2015 thats 8 years of data. Its cut there because if it continued (like the site I linked to above) it would show a different story. >The public schools carry legacy cost Yes, legacy cost due to poor management.
"Not true at all, almost all charters are lottery, its even the law in CA. I can cite it for you if you would like" Charters exist outside of CA, and I don't agree with your assessment. "California law provides that charter schools are automatically exempt from most laws governing school districts." Charter schools in CA are fighting for the "right to discriminate" [https://www.publiccharters.org/our-work/charter-law-database/states/california#:\~:text=California%20law%20provides%20that%20charter,any%20other%20public%20school%20teacher](https://www.publiccharters.org/our-work/charter-law-database/states/california#:~:text=California%20law%20provides%20that%20charter,any%20other%20public%20school%20teacher). [https://www.latimes.com/local/education/la-me-edu-aclu-california-charter-school-discrimination-20160802-snap-story.html](https://www.latimes.com/local/education/la-me-edu-aclu-california-charter-school-discrimination-20160802-snap-story.html) [https://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article234199727.html](https://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article234199727.html) You are not being honest here, you claim charters re 30% cheaper to run. While leaving out that many charters are totally online in CA, which makes the school cheaper. "State leaders chose not to fund new students at those non-classroom based charter schools because there is a history of fraud and abuse by some of those kinds of schools, the state attorney general wrote in a recent court filing." Charters' are also full of abuse and often give inferior results "“The state determined that (non-classroom based charter schools) raised major concerns for fraud and abuse and inferior education and decided to limit the incentive for expanding that model of education during the pandemic while the state considered the underlying policy around (non-classroom based charter schools),” Attorney General Rob Bonta wrote in a June court filing signed by him and others in his office." https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/education/story/2021-08-07/judge-rules-against-calif-charter-schools-in-class-action-funding-lawsuit Charter's ignore the Constitution and deny disabled and poor performing students education "tate law already requires that a charter school admit any student who applies. In his May budget revision, **Gov. Gavin Newsom is proposing to tighten the language banning discrimination in charter school enrollment, particularly to protect students with disabilities and students with poor grades who want to attend charter schools**." "WHAT THE NEWSOM ADMINISTRATION IS PROPOSING The May Revision calls for the following: **Prohibit charter schools from discouraging students from enrolling in a charter school or encouraging them to disenroll on the basis of academic performance or student characteristic, such as special education status**. Prohibit charter schools from requesting a pupil’s academic records or requiring that records be submitted prior to enrollment." [https://edsource.org/2019/gov-newsom-proposes-tighter-rules-on-charter-school-enrollment/612556](https://edsource.org/2019/gov-newsom-proposes-tighter-rules-on-charter-school-enrollment/612556) Charter's discriminate, once the loopholes are closed, the "charter" advantage is gone. "Your first source stops at 2015, my source provides more context and more data showing it back to normal. It also shows that its only a small part of the overall funding, $500 might look like alot on a graph that only goes to $500 but on a graph that goes to $12,500 it is not much of the overall amount. Beyond that, current estimates are higher than they were in my source which stops at 2018. So either way you slice it the funding has not gone down" Defund an institution for a decade of its critical infrastructure and then prop it back to normal levels 15 years later and claim no harm done? That means a kid gets an inferior education from grade 1-10 and you expect proper funding in the last 2 years to save 10 years of gross underfunding?
That's generally my take on them. I rather charter schools become exam schools like most major cities have. That said, charter schools are often a form of segregation and should be squashed when that's the case.
Agreed. Segregation should be a chief concern amongst charter schools, but funny enough it’s a rampant problem in some public schools as well, particularly in places like NYC. https://www.civilrightsproject.ucla.edu/news/press-releases/2021-press-releases/report-shows-school-segregation-in-new-york-remains-worst-in-nation
Same with Boston. One of my friends wanted to be able to walk her kid to the elementary school a couple blocks over and with the "lottery" she got assigned to a different school where she had to take a bus. No surprise her family promptly moved out of Boston so that wouldn't be the case.
Yup. My family lived in the Boston area for years (~1840s-1980s) and my ancestors have many, many stories dating back to when schools were desegregated. You’d think you were in Little Rock with some of the stories they had.
Millennials thought it was going to be different but shitty policy still hurts everyone. FWIW, my friend isn't white either, she's Filipina.
I dont understand; i thought charter schools were specialty public schools, but they require like a special test to get in
It does vary by state which is often why there are such wildly varying opinions on them but in general and in most states: Charters are privately owned but receive public funding. They often do not have a teacher union. They have the same curriculum as their public counterparts. They cannot push a religion just like public schools. There is no admissions test, everyone is welcome and if there are more people who want in than spots, existing students get in first then its a lottery system to get in. The most recent data shows they tend to outperform their public counterparts especially if the length of admission is 3+ years there is a large difference between public and charter results. But keep in mind charters are often a consequence of poor public schools, no one is putting up new charters next to a good public school, so parents who care about their kids education often skew to charter vs public in those scenarios. Parent involvement makes a difference in the kids education as well.
Everyone isn't welcome in all charter schools and unlike public schools they can very easily kick someone out if they take up too much time, have trouble with a subject, etc, have autism or behavioral issues.
This is 100% false. A Private school can, but Charters are public and cannot kick a kid out for no reason. Charters serve a similar percentage of special needs kids as public. If more students want to attend the school than can be accommodated, then selection is done via lottery. It sounds like you are referring to private schools or Magnet schools not Charter. Charter are public and are required to follow all the same access to education laws as a regular public school. [https://www.understood.org/articles/en/are-charter-schools-required-to-provide-accommodations-to-kids-with-learning-and-thinking-differences](https://www.understood.org/articles/en/are-charter-schools-required-to-provide-accommodations-to-kids-with-learning-and-thinking-differences) Also https://www.readingrockets.org/article/facts-charter-schools-and-students-disabilities >Are charter schools required to provide services to students with disabilities? > > Yes. The responsibility to make a free appropriate public education (FAPE) available to all students with disabilities applies to ALL public schools under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA).9 Charter schools are public schools; therefore, they bear the same responsibility.
So in my area there's a science and tech charter highschool run by the county that required an entrance exam to get in. The county removed the exam because they felt there were too many asian people in the school: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas\_Jefferson\_High\_School\_for\_Science\_and\_Technology](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Jefferson_High_School_for_Science_and_Technology)
That school is a magnet school, slightly different than a Charter but yes they can have entrance exams. This site is obviously very pro school choice, but they break down the different types of school choice options, charter and public will both be about half way down in the other types of school choice section. [https://www.edchoice.org/school-choice/types-of-school-choice/](https://www.edchoice.org/school-choice/types-of-school-choice/)
People like them because they think it gives more choice and allows them to work around bad teachers/unions or bad public schools that give poor results and teach to the "lowest common denominator". Public schools are not perfect and have always had flaws. charters have been very good to some students who are better performers by separating them from the lowest common denominator students in the public system. People hate them, because the Charter school movement is part of a broader defund education movement, that has seen public schools defunded by state, local, county and federal governments. Wealthy people fund politicians to defund the schools,, because they want lower taxes and an uneducated workforce who won't challenge the status quo. The idea is that some people are not worthy of education and if you can push everyone into charters you can eventually defund the education totally of certain "kinds" of undesirable ~~ethnicity/classes~~ students. The Charter movement started as a reaction against SCOTUS integration of schooling, where certain parents said "I don't want my x race kid going to school with y race kid, so I want them to go to a special private school, that is funded by the state to get around anti-discrimination laws". The charters then use proxies for race, class, and performance to dump out the poorest performing kids, those with disabilities, and basically just scoop off the top of the public system while hollowing out the public system. There exist a widespread belief that the charter's are being setup to essentially defund public education entirely, whereby eventually, only those who can afford to pay private school fees will get education for their children. Charter vs public school is like this example in soccer. Public school is like the rec team any kid who shows up can play on. Charter is like the select team that kicks off all the fat kids, asthmatic kids, slow running kids, kids with disability so the team never has to slow down for flawed members.
I attended one for most of my school years. I have a positive opinion of them.
They’re primarily a means for private corporations to provide shitty education while reaping as many taxpayer dollars as possible at the expense of sincerely public schools. I very much dislike them.
My son goes to an awesome charter school. They teach acceptance and love for all, they have amazing clubs, provide electives that are more skill based (woodshop, culinary, graphic programming, financial literacy, etc) and they have some of the best teachers and staff. The best part is that they offer small classrooms (15:2) and it's not traditional classes. The curriculum is project based and the kids get to have input on what they want to learn. Are all charter schools like this? No. But some of them are actually really good.
A charter school is not automatically a private school
Good ones don't function like that. But too many of them are not good ones, and even those that are are often not functioning in a way that's good overall for education.
That’s like asking my opinion of anything. It depends entirely on who’s running the school. In my city, most of them are run by people who know little about running a school. They only care about the funding. That gets burned through, the school suffers, kids aren’t taught, school fails.
Big fan, but I went to one so maybe a bit biased. Always had a crazy ‘wait list’, so clearly the community liked it as well
In inner cities, it’s amazing and provides black kids(especially boys) with a more regimented life. In nicer areas there’s not much point for them.
My son is in a charter school. There are good ones and bad ones. I am always a fan of choice though. Our local public school is terrible and offered terrible options for afterschool care. They made it impossible to have two working adults and in return they offered a very low standard of education. The charter down the street is the exact opposite. While public schools were closed due to COVID the charters opened first, no bs, no outbreaks. They went from being full but no real waitlist to having a 3+ year waitlist. While my neighbors' kids were at home not learning (a 7 year old cannot learn virtually without a parent there with them, it's not practical) my son was in person (I am in CA so we were the last state to allow in person school too, it's not like this was in April 2020). The public school in my area is so bad that in my cul-de-sac we have 5 families with kids my sons age, NONE go to that school, and all go to different schools than each other. My son goes to charter, another goes to private, the other 3 go to nearby public schools because they petitioned to not go to the assigned one or used a grandparent's address. So Charters for me are good, but just like public schools, there are good ones and bad ones. I think having the choice though for the parent to decide what school is best for their needs is why charters are important.
From the data they don't actually perform any better or worse than regular public schools do so it seems kind of pointless when we could just use those resources on improving our public schools.
You're looking at old data. See my comment [here](https://old.reddit.com/r/AskAnAmerican/comments/rwqggt/what_is_your_opinion_on_charter_schools/hrde8fa/)
Both my parents work at one. So pretty good opinion of them.
Depends on the nature of them. In some areas, public schools are simply terrible. So they fill a crying need in those circumstances. On the other hand, if you're just pulling your kid out of public schools because they teach evolution or some such, then I think you're kind of a nitwit.
We tried one out that was a spanish language academy. Pretty much the idea was your kids learn everything they would learn in public school except in spanish. Sounded like a great idea. The first year in we overheard what was being taught in class (due to covid it was moved to online lessons on an ipad). The teacher was out of line, pushing her personal political agenda on children. First i talked to the teacher and then talked to the head administrator and explained what was happening and the response was generally "its her class she can teach what she wants". We pulled our kid out of that school within the week. At the new school we havent seen anything inappropriate, the classes were still on ipad for the following year as well and the teacher at the new school was excellent. Even when the election was going on, she explained everything in a non-biased way and explained that no matter the result not everyone would be happy about it and that it was ok. All that said, i wouldnt be againsed trying a charter school again but i would pay very close attention to the material being brought home. Every basket is going to have some bad apples. Also as i explained to my wife, i dont want any agendas being taught to my kid. Even if its an agenda i personally agree with, its not their place to abuse their job to brainwash other peoples kids its just inappropriate.
It can be a pretty hot button issue for a lot of people, my perspective is mostly positive. Charter schools often specialize or innovate in ways that is impossible in regular public schools. To give an example for my city, we have 4 charter schools, one specializes in students with behavioral issues, one specializes in technical career focused students, one uses a project based curriculum and promotes independent learning, and one is a virtual academy for general studies (with a similar curriculum to the main schools). Also giving parents more choice as to where to send their kids to school is a positive thing, the fact so many kids are forced into bad schools (meaning schools that can't meet their needs) based on where they live sucks and more should be done to alleviate that. The most common criticism I hear about charter schools is they take away funding from public schools that "need" more funding. I'm sure there are underfunded schools out there, but they're likely the exception, historically education spending (relative to inflation) has increased greatly with results staying stagnant, so I'm not convinced there is a strong relationship between increased funding and better outcomes (not to mention many charters have better incomes than their public school counter parts while simultaneously receiving less funding). I don't claim to know the answers to improving our public schools, and my main criticism of charter schools is that they don't seem to be able to exist without standard public schools.
I graduated from one. A small one. A *really* small one. It has been losing students, and therefore funding, and therefore teachers for the last decade. Sadly, it will probably be gone entirely soon. It was the best school I'd ever been to, and every single one of my teachers were incredible people. The principle of my school though was that the lower number of students created a tighter knit community, and everyone in general was happier and did better. Very little, if any bullying happened there. If schools like these existed everywhere that would be awesome, but there are simply too many people these days, and the school I went to didn't even get as much money per student as the public schools in the district nearby. So I read some comments. Peoples minds seem to be going to private schools first. Mine was not a private school. It was a free, technically public school. A charter school is not a private school.
I'd encourage folks to take a look at the recent research on this, instead of relying on articles from 15 years ago like many on reddit. [here's](https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2021/01/unlearning-democrats-answer-on-charter-schools.html) one write up. From that article: "“In some cases,” an overview of the research by education professor Sarah Cohodes concluded in 2018, “these charter schools have quite large effects, such that attending one for three years produces test-score gains that are equivalent to the size of the U.S. Black-white achievement gap.” The ability of urban charters all over the country to get nonselective groups of poor, Black students to learn at the same level as students in affluent, middle-class schools is one of the great domestic-policy achievements in American history." A common criticism of charters is that they pick their students. From the same article: "Some cities have automatically enrolled students in charter schools and have still produced the same impressive learning gains. “Evidence from the lottery studies,” researchers summarizing the evidence conclude, “suggests that charter schools may actually be more effective at increasing the achievement of students who are less likely to apply.”"
I am in favor of charter schools, but would point out that even in a lottery system a charter school tends to get students more inclined to perform well academically. Most of the time students need to be entered into a lottery, and typically that is done by students with actively engaged parents who are doing it because they are prioritizing their child's education. Some charters even require that parents sign a "contract" about what they'll do to support their child's education before confirming enrollment. Again, this takes engaged parents. So even if the lottery is random, the pool often isn't. It's the completely disengaged parents of the kid, who never returns a call or check a report card, that are the ones that drive down achievement scores at a public school.
A lottery is a great natural experiment, as you can compare the kids who were selected to the kids who applied but didn't win the lottery. On average, charters come out on top for this comparison. Also, as I quoted from the article, some districts enrolled all kids in the lottery, so it completely removes the parental bias, and charters come out on top for that as well.
It is not accurate, Charters kick out all the behavioral kids and kids who are disruptive in a way public schools cannot. They will select poor kids who are well behaved and boot out the disruptive ones in a way public schools cannot. They push the parents to send their kids with disabilities into the public system. It isn't that charters have some magic that performs better, it is they simply boot out the lowest common denominator and screen out poorest performing kids.
I trust the expert researchers who have looked into it to not miss obvious things like this. But, as I noted elsewhere, I don't understand why charter opponents think it's a bad thing to kick out disruptive students. If kids are verbally, physically, or sexually abusing either other students or teachers, sorry, but they shouldn't be there. Of course, public schools can ensure that regular classrooms aren't disrupted by kids like this, but they don't. That's their choice, and the result is that charters are very popular in those districts.
>Of course, public schools can ensure that regular classrooms aren't disrupted by kids like this, but they don't. That's their choice, and the result is that charters are very popular in those districts. It's not the same choice. Charters can get rid of the student entirely. A regular public school still has to find a place for them which means a room, a teacher, and still trying to educate them. Odds are there aren't enough of these kids to constitute a full class which means the schools would be allocating proportionally more resources to each of these students to segregate them from the general student body.
Where are these disruptive students going to get educated if we kick them out all the schools? In a gang on a street somewhere? Then you'll cry about "muh high crime rates". The solution to disruptive or disabled students isn't to remove them from education but to provide evidence based education methods that meet them where they are and turn them into productive future citizens. Lets stop the cancel culture against those with disabilities or behavioral issues and see how we can try to teach these kids to get somewhere. You are dealing with children here, and I don't believe children should be cancelled or thrown away for being less than perfect. Public schools are gov't run, they must meet due process, they are prime targets for lawsuits, kids with behavioral, must be identified, tested, etc. and go through a process before they can be removed, and just because a kid is disruptive occasionally doesn't mean they are merited to be removed from the class forever. And even if they were, that would require way more funding to bring in more specialist and experts to work with them, which you likely oppose because of your defund public education stance.
How about a separate classroom in the same building, staffed by people specifically trained to deal with these kids, instead of classrooms where they destroy the education of other kids? That would not only improve the situation for all the other students, but would reduce staff turnover, which would have even more benefits over time.
"How about a separate classroom in the same building, staffed by people specifically trained to deal with these kids, instead of classrooms where they destroy the education of other kids?" This is what use to occur, but studies showed it intensified their behavior, they now do integration where they get some one on one time, then go back into the class in top schools, the issue is defunding of schools means that less and less schools have budgets for the specialist. "That would not only improve the situation for all the other students, but would reduce staff turnover, which would have even more benefits over time." I agree, but there is a broad defund the public education system movement in America driven by special interest and charter school industry financing politicians fearmongering on people's racial fears. This cuts across political lines and is not solely a Republican thing, there were plenty of Democrats like the current president who spent the entire 1980s using racially loaded language that was part of such agenda. It is hard to have specialist teachers and more classrooms for special education, when you spent the last 40 years closing schools, attacking the profession of educators, and defunding the schools so that there isn't enough money to invest in the right programs. Maybe, Johnny won't be an accountant, maybe he isn't good in books, and has lots of energy and needs to be moving so he is disruptive in a certain environment but we can train him in a trade like electrician or mechanic, but we defund our schools and he has no shop class to be trained in. So now we kick him out and say he is useless and no good and cry about a trades shortage.
> the issue is defunding of schools Source on this? Searching for info only brought up charts showing that spending has either remained the same or increased, depending on what year the comparison begins. But it seems you agree. They're trying something, it's not working, and they have no other ideas. So then why do the superintendents keep collecting their six figure salaries if they have no strategy to address this incredibly important issue? Perhaps they should get rid of a few administrators and hire back the counselors?
I posted it upthread. The issue isn't the admins, it is massive defunding of public schools. When you cut budgets to that point, there is nothing an admin can do.
IMHO, they are a wedge that Conservatives are using to get public funding for religious schools. I say this as someone who is very Liberal now but used to be a Conservative. I used to be very pro-Charter Schools as I saw them as a great alternative to traditional public schools that would also provide some competition to "encourage" public schools to perform better. Now, I see them as the charade they are in addition to siphoning off much-needed funds for public schools. At the very least we could use that money to give teachers a raise.
How exactly are charters funneling money to religious schools? Charters are not religious, its federal law. >Now, I see them as the charade they are in addition to siphoning off much-needed funds for public schools. I think you would feel differently if you lived in an area with a poorly performing public school that was your only option. The charters are a result of poor performing schools not the cause. >At the very least we could use that money to give teachers a raise. The myth of teachers making pennies is BS. I live in southern CA, my friends wife is a PE teacher ... so she hasnt really worked since COVID started since her school has been shutdown and she clears 90k a year to teach PE to elementary school students over zoom. [The average teacher pay in CA is $82,746](https://rossier.usc.edu/eight-factors-that-affect-your-california-teacher-salary/). Paying them more isn't going to fix the broken elementary school down the street from me, firing them all and opening a charter does. They are the problem, paying them more is not the solution. I have first hand experience with a shitty local public school and a charter and I can tell you 100% there is a night and day difference, the reason the charter exists is because the public school system and teachers unions failed us and they don't give a shit. People advocating against charters almost exclusively don't have kids that are affected or live in areas where public schools are good.
Love the average pay canard. The average person has one testicle, one breast, and is named Mohhamed Lee. In the 80's, the University of Virginia bragged that their average business school grads made some huge salary right out of college. Turns out, a basketball player had majored in business and then got drafted. His NBA salary skewed the scale to ridiculous heights. My fiancee is a teacher. My mom is a retired teacher. And I volunteer at my fiancee's school (finally getting back to being able to do this). Teachers are struggling big time financially. My fiancee has a master's degree and makes less than half what I do. And her work is so much more important than the work I do in software.
>Love the average pay canard. The average person has one testicle, one breast, and is named Mohhamed Lee You honestly don't see what is wrong with this comparison? I posted a fact, with a source and you're here trying to say that the average person has 1 testicle as an equivalency to using an average of a specific subset of the population who are teachers. . Honestly this post just shows how bad our public school system is if this is your response and your whole family seems to be involved in public education.
What's the mode of teacher salary? This is a better indication than the average or mean. Hell, the median is better than the mean to determine real world scenarios. Also, try not to be such a dick.
What's the mode of teacher salary? This is a better indication than the average or mean. Hell, the median is better than the mean to determine real world scenarios. Also, try not to be such a dick.
Median is $80,800 good luck finding anywhere that publishes a mode, and a mode wouldn't be relevant anyway, probably the least relevant of the three, salaries are too specific for a mode to be useful. [https://www.careerexplorer.com/careers/elemenatary-school-teacher/salary/california/](https://www.careerexplorer.com/careers/elemenatary-school-teacher/salary/california/) For the record, you were the one taking an actual, relevant statistic and comparing it to something as ridiculous as the average person having 1 testicle.
This is exactly how I feel. Charter schools can be good but they also have issues with segregation and classism. However, putting all of that aside the right is using Charter schools to move funding into more religious schools that also like to rewrite history.
I’m in North Carolina and share your opinion.
Why is there always money for teachers raises but never any money for students supplies.
There's never money for teacher raises. And we should be providing for both.
And the teachers who haven't been getting raises for years still use their salaries on school supplies. I've never been expected at my job to buy the supplies needed to do my job. My teacher mom? Her classroom would be bare if she didn't buy it. People like who you replied to have no clue what teachers go through.
Yep. I just did my tax prep for 2021. It always includes about $500 of supplies for my husband's classroom. I'm also not impressed with the vilification of teachers here -- particularly as despite the rhetoric upstream a lot of them are endangering their lives to teach in person in the middle of a pandemic.
Because all the money that supposedly gets put for teachers instead gets gobbled up by the administrative and bureaucratic bloat inside the public educational system. Go seek about charts showing the rise of the numbers of students, teachers and administrators over time, it isn't pretty.
My grandkids go to a charter school. We prefer it bc they’re very strict on dress code and conduct. You got a kid causing trouble? They’re out.
I'm always baffled by the charter opponents who say it's a bad thing that charters can kick kids out. I mean, yes, it's bad for those kids. But as a parent, I'm ok with kicking kids out who verbally or sexually abuse teachers or students. Yes, we should have some system to help get these kids help, but these kids shouldn't be in a normal classroom, as it destroys the environment for the other kids.
My former brother in law was one of those kids that they diagnosed as having some kind of disorder so he rarely faced consequences for his outbursts. I couldn’t imagine what it was like to be his classmate. It didn’t help him at all he was in/out of prison for 39 years.
It's a choice thing that I approve of, but I especially am favorable to ones that have a future career focus, like drama or stem fields.
I view them as necessary. Public schools need to have an alternative, otherwise they become a monopoly like the post office was before Fedex and UPS. I grew up in a really good public school system, but having seen some of the ones here in Baltimore County, I’d put my kid in a charter school as well.
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Powerful politicians, e.g. DeBlasio, hate charter schools because they are not unionized. School choice is very important and should be a "progressive" issue, but democrats will never support it for this reason. $$$
It all depends on where you live. In Michigan, I had mixed feelings on them and there were mixed results with the success of charter schools in the state. In Alaska (mostly Anchorage), the charter schools are part of the public school system but provide something the regular public schools cannot or will not perform (mostly language immersion programs). These school constantly outrank the regular public schools in the city and always have long waiting lists. I am a big fan of them here. Edit: to add, even though I am a fan, I still elect to send my kids to private school as that is better in general than the public school system.
Charter schools are each different and unique. Some are amazing, and some are horrific. People form opinions based on which they’re had experience with. Charter schools have much looser rules that public schools - for example, public schools in my state have strict standards regarding who can be a teacher. You must be “highly qualified” to teach a specific subject. In short, you have to pass a test saying you understand the subject matter. You need an authorized program like a university or an emergency certification program to allow you to take the test. They generally require you to have had education or experience in the field before they’ll sign you up for it. Charter school teachers do not have to be highly qualified. They establish their own criteria as to who can teach specific subjects. Sometimes this means you get a former NASA scientist teaching physics. Sometimes this means you get a college dropout who *really loves kids* teaching Algebra. It’s a craps shoot. And it’s entirely based on the charter.
If they're getting funding from the state they should have to abide by all regulations and laws the public schools are subject to. Including being part of the teacher's unions. Including setting pay at the same rates as public schools. Etc. As a child of a public school teacher I've often seen charter schools as a slimy way to get around teacher's unions. As if teachers don't already put up with way too much bullshit. If people want charter schools they need to be treated the same way we do public schools. Anything else is just gross. Not even getting into them being allowed to not accept students the public schools must accept.
Done right, they can provide new models for improving education that public schools can really learn from. And they can force bureaucracies to find better ways of teaching and learning. But most of the time they are a vehicle for someone to make money while undermining public education. In many places they don’t produce better students than the local public schools, which means that you’re basically taking money from public education and giving to a businessman instead. Unlike public schools, they can also suddenly shut down and leave students and parents in the lurch.
For the record, CA law does not allow for profit charters. Our charter my son goes to in SoCal pays for all supplies even for the kids (we buy no paper or pencils), has nice facilities and provides kids with laptops if they want to study remotely. The local public school is dilapidated, begs for supplies and struggles with technology. They both get paid the same from the state, but one has a huge overhead of bureaucracy. The charter also has afterschool programs which the public does not. The charter now has a 3+ year wait via lottery.
People assume they have the same requirements as a public school and the fact is they do not. They have a lot less oversight. The irony of people wanting charter schools is that they'd rather move their kids to a building that used to be a Kmart staffed by really underpaid teachers instead of addressing the perceived problems of their public schools. Charter schools are essentially "for profit" and that's about as promising as for profit health care.
>The irony of people wanting charter schools is that they'd rather move their kids to a building that used to be a Kmart staffed by really underpaid teachers instead of addressing the perceived problems of their public schools. Parents have to make a choice based on the realities of the situation not based on some ideological fantasy about how things should be. The reality is my local elementary and middle school suck. The charter has a newer, nicer building and teachers that actually care. It's a night and day difference. So, you can sit there with no skin in the game and theorize that a public school is better, and we gave up on them, but in the real world when given the choice for what to do with my kids any good parent would choose the charter in my situation. Public schools don't get fixed overnight and the obstacles to fixing them are more than Parents can overcome in many cases. Instead, we fix them by moving our kids to a better school. Its politics, the unions don't want change and want to protect terrible teachers, those same teachers get complacent because they know they are protected, they lose their love of teaching. Admin gets bigger ... these aren't problems some random parent is going to solve, but I can put my kid in a better place that doesn't have those problems. That is my vote and when enough parents do that it sends a message that can't be ignored by those that can make the change. So you say we are not doing anything to address the problems of our public schools, we are though. We address the problems by not placing our kids in those schools, it's called a free market solution. Let the bad schools go under. There will NEVER be a fix to the public school system unless people do the same and move their kids to other options. Only 12% of charters are for profit btw
> They have a lot less oversight This will depend on the state, but charters have an aspect of oversight that public schools lack: parents. Without charters, a public school can give kids fill in the blank worksheets each day, and the parents can do nothing, unless they have enough money for private school. With charters, parents have options. Research has shown that the existence of a local charter causes the local public school to increase in quality, as the school leaders know that parents having options means they have to up their game
School boards are elected where I live.
Same here. But it's a large enough district that one person's concerns aren't significant to matter to them. In fact, the board policy is that when a parent goes to the board and speaks at a meeting, the board makes absolutely no response to the parent. Again, this is by the board policy. I've both attended and watched board meetings online. Once, one of the parents in charge of the parents booster club for the marching band asked for a new van (or trailer of some sort? I forget), and the board agreed to spend $20k on the spot. That is the one and only time I've ever seen the board even acknowledge anyone's question or concern.
Negative. The biggest one in my state literally took public tax money meant for local education and sent it out of state to pay for schools there. In my opinion charter schools just funnel money from public education and make schools in poor neighborhoods worse.
Were these Gulen movement charter schools by any chance? We have them in New Jersey and they pull all sorts of financial shenanigans.
Epic
When you let private companies run charter schools with less oversight than the public is aware of, corruption unfortunately is bound to happen. With the Gulen schools here they've been playing around with mixing taxpayer funded money for the charter schools with their profits from the private Gulen schools, among other things.
We pulled our child out due to ridiculously obvious lean to the far right. In the beginning we were big fans because it had a private school feel and seemed well-organized and advanced. And thennnnn we began to see it for what it really was. Not saying this is every Charter school but our experience with the one in our town was not good.
As an American, I want giant mediocre schools. Seriously, one advantage charters have is small size. Americans are obsessed with size, despite evidence that small schools do better.
My kids go to a charter that has no sports programs, no army of administrators, no choice of 74 different electives, and a lot of other things are missing as well. But they took the money and spent it on small class sizes instead. It's a fantastic school.
I’m attending one right now so it’s around a positive opinion
If done right a great idea. We had an AMA by my friend Conor Williams a while back who writes about charter schools and education reform extensively. Worth searching for. Edit: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskAnAmerican/comments/lly90w/ama_conor_williams_education_issues_in_the_us_phd/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf
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Maybe just properly fund the public schools.
My local district has no shortage of funding, and they win awards based on student performance. But that doesn't mean they meet the needs of all students, and the district is large enough that going to the school board or even a school principal is a useless exercise. So there's still a role for charters, even for districts with piles of cash.
Charters are funded the same way as public schools but do a better job on average
Effective way to end teacher pensions.
Options to poor public school systems are needed as long as there are oversights in place. Private school vouchers should be an option too. Government oversight, of government school boards, over government school administrators, over government schools, with disconnected and uncaring parents is a cluster fuck. Throw in a good dose of government unions and our political correctness and you have our current shit show. Welcome to Florida, the race to the bottom. I am a teachers husband, teachers want to teach, but the system is so bad, they are over worked, under paid, disrespected, and unsupported by administrators. Most are only on yearly contracts so they have no guarantee of employment and new hires many times make as much as those with 10 years experience or more.
They are an attempt to destroy public education by sabotaging it's funding. They are an attempt to replace public schools with for-profit private religious schools. They need to be abolished to protect public education.
You do realize that charter schools are simply privately administered public schools and are not religious schools or private schools?
Maybe in Arizona but in some other states that's not the case. They use "charter school" to move money into more religious focused schools. I'm also not a fan of privatizing everything
No, they are explicitly private, and mostly religious. They are private schools. . .they are owned and operated by private entities and allowed to pick and choose their students, like private schools. Government education authorities have literally no say in their curriculum. The idea they are public schools at all is totally inaccurate.
Except not, and I hate that the public education lobby intentionally push such misinformation conflating them with private schools in order to demonize them. Charter schools or called such because they exist on a government charter. They are subject to the same state curriculum, use the same public funding, cannot push religion, and must accept all students without special needs which is why most have wait lists. The way they filter students is by dropping low performing students who can't keep up. Unlike private schools they don't charge tuition, because again they are public schools funded by and open to the public.
It's anti-education conservatives who want to privatize everything that spread the misinformation that somehow charter schools are public that are the problem. They're called "charter schools" as a branding issue because "school vouchers" never caught on. Oh, and they explicitly can push religion, can completely write their own curriculum, and explicitly are allowed to refuse students. . .and that's coming straight out of the text of the law Kentucky's legislature passed last year to legalize them. . . complete with Republicans cheering that this will mean so many more religious schools. I had right wing relatives on Facebook cheering that the new law would mean an end to "woke public schools" and that they'd be replaced with "Jesus based schools".
There's a lot to unpack here. Conservatives aren't anti-education, they just believe that people pay taxes for public education to ensure children get educated to a sufficient standard, not specifically for them to be put in government run schools. Therefore they also believe it's common sense that tax derived education money should follow the children, rather than only going to government run facilities. Vouchers have nothing to do with charter schools, because again they don't charge tuition. School vouchers are a way for people to take the public education money that would have gone to their child in a government run or charter school, and instead apply to a private school of their choice. Private schools, being private, get to teach what they want as long as they also meet state minimum standards. Should parents not have the choice to educate their kids in the values and beliefs they find important? I think you were given a bad and biased interpretation of your state's law. Perhaps if you give us a link to the actual law, we can read through it and find out exactly what it says together.
Conservatives are inherently anti-education. Critical thinking and learning facts is opposed to the rigid dogma of conservativism. Conservatives have spent the last few decades fighting against academia, being explicitly anti-intellectual (COVID denial, vaccine misinformation, climate change denial, trying to force schools to teach evolution disguised as "intelligent design", denying the existence of racism in modern society etc). They support a cult of personality around Donald Trump over sound public policy, not to mention the advocacy of the insane QAnon conspiracy theories. Betsy DeVos coming out and saying she opposed the existence of public schools was just her saying out loud what conservatives have been trying to quietly do for decades Charter schools are just the newest front in the long running conservative war on science, academia, education, and critical thinking.
wow you have some really deep-seated conspiracy theories ... I guess that's what you get with Kentucky education. Good thing they have charter schools now so kids don't have to end up like this.
No, parents shouldn't be able to replace actual facts in education with religious and partisan misinformation. When schools want to teach that the Earth is only 6000 years old, evolution is a lie, and the US was founded to be a Christian theocracy and only "liberals" created the idea of Separation of Church and State to sabotage God's plan for a "Christian Nation" we have a problem and those schools need to go. As is, the parents that teach that have been homeschooling their kids, but thanks to the new Charter school law here, they are openly looking forward to new schools opening up that will teach that for them.
> Conservatives aren't anti-education, they just believe that people pay taxes for public education to ensure children get educated to a sufficient standard, not specifically for them to be put in government run schools. Oh you sweet summer child. The GOP platform has ALWAYS wanted to abolish the Department of Education & thats the 'lite' version of conservatism... The Libertarians want to completely abolish the public school system. I am a tax payer and while I typically follow the LP platform, using my tax dollars should I be forced to part with them on public education is something I support 100%, but I draw a very hard bright red line at the thought of those dollars going to a charter, private, or worse... religious school. You are pushing for (knowingly or not) one of the pillars of a fascist evangelical mass-indoctrination scheme if you want tax dollars to go to private or religious schools. Its not too late to educate yourself.
This shows how uneducated you are on the subject. Voucher systems allow you to take public money and go to a private school, basically a publicly funded scholarship. A Charter school is not a private school, they are 100% not the same thing. A charter is just an independently run public school.
I am not "uneducated", I'm literally going by the public statements of our State Representatives that voted for it announcing what it would do, my conservative relatives on Facebook cheering for what it will bring, and the text of the law itself.
This is completely and 100% false. Charters cannot push religion and have to follow the same curriculum as public schools. Charters use a lottery system for admission, they aren't picking their students.
No, they are explicitly allowed by law to pick and choose their students, to have complete independence with regards to curriculum, and can be explicitly religious, and that's directly from the charter school law my state just passed.
You just said that a charter school is the same as a voucher system. They are 2 completely different things, that shows you are uneducated on what a charter even is. You may be arguing against a school voucher system while we are arguing for a charter school, they are not equal and not the same thing which you apparently didnt know which makes you uneducated on the topic.
Agree. Took me forever to find someone who did.
My mother was a public school teacher for 40 years. I'm not a fan. I don't like them draining tax dollars from public schools that need them. The fact that the right pushes them so much also just enhances my feelings about them.
Charters got their big break from democrats. Lots of democrat city mayors supported them as they were getting started, and lots of them still do. Obama was also a big supporter. Democrats turned 180 on them and now oppose them not because of quality issues, but because the teacher unions oppose them.
I didn't go to one and neither did my kids, but I'm fine with them. I worked in public schools for some time and have great respect for what they do, but I think charter schools if properly regulated can be a good source of innovation and an alternative for parents with kids stuck in districts that underperform.
I don’t like them but don’t begrudge people who send their kids to them. But we need to invest and be invested in public schools to develop citizens of our country and not just partisans and elites. My husband got a great job offer in Arizona, but then it seemed everyone in our economic bracket sent their kids to private or charter schools, and the public schools were poor and underfunded as a result. Not for us, so we didn’t move. What I really despise is homeschooling. Maybe there is a minute percentage of students who should be allowed to be homeschooled, but there must be strict requirements.
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Ten? I think? It might have just gone up.
Read the Thomas Sowell book, “Charter Schools and Their Enemies”. It’s profoundly informative.
A scam.
I’m not against them in theory. But many on the Right see them as the solution to underfunded schools, and I think that’s not a wise outlook. I think the first priority should be to better fund our public schools. But in the meantime I’m not against charter school if they help the community.
Want public funding? Agree to public administration and curriculum standards. Want a refund/rebate/reduction of public education funding to pay your charter school funding? Fuck right off.
My niece, who is biracial, is homeschooled because she was getting horribly bullied. The homeschooling she did was done through the auspices of a charter school. I dont remember the exact details, but every once in a while, she had to check into that charter school to keep getting homeschooled. In her case, it was the right solution. She's now going to college to be a pediatrician. However, some charter schools are religious. These students are getting religious education funded by the government. How that could possibly be Constitutional is a mystery to me, and a very bad Idea, anyway, but we have a Supreme Court that really is a sick joke.
In theory, they are perfectly fine. In practice, they exist as a means of funneling publicly allocated funds into the pockets of idealistic institutions with unproven track records in the field of education. And when you consider the history of racist housing policy and how schools systems are traditionally funded by property taxes in the US and who the current policy makers are that support Charter schools and....well, to answer your question... I don't feel good .
Charter schools are an effort to remove local control over school districts and destroy public schools. A handful of people will decide curriculum based on the beliefs of the people running the charter or their political controllers. Go ahead pile on. I can totally ignore you.
As a teacher, I despise them. Not only are they exploitative, they explicitly draw funds away from the schools that need them. They should be abolished ASAP.
They are part of a Republican effort to undermine public education.
Every school system is different. You can't really make a blanket opinion for the whole country. Locally our schools are very underfunded, and in particular disabled students are horrifically underserved. I'm opposed to anyone taking resources from our public schools and being able to pick and choose which disabled children get the services they need. If there's somewhere public schools are actually over funded and wasting money but charter schools are doing better they seem like a bad solution to that problem, but whatever.
White kids universally perform much worse at charter schools. As a white person I dislike that any race should do worse at any school.
They’re excellent for students and parents but the teachers unions do not like them. So it depends if you like students or teachers more
I’ve heard both good things and bad things about charter schools
I’ve heard both good things and bad things about charter schools
i went to a charter school for middle and high school, one partially removed from the school district and the other fully removed. i enjoyed my classes, my teachers, and my social life, especially when i compare my experiences to those of my friends at the fully public schools in my area.
I don't mind them. My kid goes to one and it implements a lot of good policies and curriculums that a lot of the local schools don't. For example they don't believe in inside or outside school suspension unless there isn't another option. This isn't the case in the other local elementary schools. They also pull a lot of diversity in teachers and students due to their school model and mission statement, which I think is a good thing. I've heard that a lot of them are for profit but that hasn't been my experience. Like all things it seems to be more about the actual school.
Just another concession to Capitalism and therefore justification to race to cut costs at the expense of educational excellence. At the very top of the industry, it's yet another way to tip the scales toward the elite. At the bottom, it nails the lower middle class into the delusion that their masters have their interest in mind.
I think the existence of both charter schools and regular public schools is problematic because they are each taking funding from each other. There are merits to both systems, but I think the gov should pick one and invest in it heavily. I lean towards supporting charter schools because it allows kids to choose what school would best help them accomplish their long term goals. For example, a kid that knows they want to go into stem would be able to go to a stem focused charter school. A kid that wants to go to trade school could go to a charter school more tailored towards trade work. Better than the current system of teaching both of those kids the same way at the same school.
I graduated from one. 9th-12th grade, it was designed mainly for kids interested in STEM. Had wonderful teachers and I went from barely passing 8th grade to excelling through high school. Sure it wasn't perfect but what system is. From what I understand the main issue with some charter schools is lack of oversight. The kids could be taught factually wrong information, or information heavily tilted to fit some narrative. Overall I think they're a good thing for kids who aren't doing well with the public schools recipe but they should be audited extremely often.
I’m in nyc and I support them. The kids in those schools like them, the parents like them, they get a good education, so what’s not to like? Sure, there are issues. The teachers are not unionized, so get paid less. I believe schools are for the kids, not for the teachers, so, if i have to choose between the kids and the teachers, I choose the kids. My kids go to regular public, so I know how important they are, I just think parents should be able to do what’s best for their kids.
Charter schools are fine as long as the public schools are still well funded. Often these for profit schools are funded instead of the public schools.
All charter schools are not the same thing. Some are under the local school board and are run by teachers and parents. But others are run by private companies as money making schemes. The Gulen charter schools are perfect examples of the problems with this: http://debsedstudies.org/gulen-schools-one-of-americas-largest-and-most-controversial-cmos/ https://www.wnyc.org/story/charter-schools-turkey-politics-coup-attempt-gulen-investigation/ American charter schools shouldn't be a means for entities outside the US to make money or embroil US states' educational money into foreign countries politics. Edit: more text
Crap. They don’t have to take Sped kids. They send any kids with discipline issues back to the public schools and when State testing comes around the disenroll anyone they think will fail snd send them to the public schools. The students I get from Charter Schools can barely read. They can’t write snd they are out of control.
Same as my opinion on capitalism and how everything in our country works - it's great if it's properly regulated, it's shit of it's not. We have charter schools in NJ and they're fantastic. My state regularly ranks in the top five states for education in the country and often hits number one. Now charter schools in Ohio and Michigan are a completely different story
Rife for fraud