Why charter schools work

Charter schools also enroll a higher proportion of black and Hispanic students than public schools as a whole, according to data from the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools. In , just over half of charter schools — 56 percent — were in urban areas. Like traditional public schools , charter schools receive money from states and the federal government for each student they enroll. But in many states and districts, they receive less per pupil than a traditional public school would, in part because many charter schools don't receive money for facilities.

A new study from the University of Arkansas found that charter schools in 30 states and D. The researchers found the biggest cause of the gap was local government money, which was overwhelmingly skewed toward traditional public schools.

The number was weighted because charter schools are more likely to educate students in urban areas than traditional public schools, and urban districts usually receive more money per pupil than suburban and rural districts. Donations like those from Walton are one way that charter schools make up the gap for the money they don't get from local government sources.

But the researchers said that traditional public schools get revenue from other sources, too, and they get more of it per pupil than charter schools. Charter schools are part of a broader movement known as " school choice. While education reformers broadly agree that students and parents should have choices, they often don't agree on what form those choices should take.

Magnet schools, voucher programs, open enrollment policies that allow students to go to any school in a district, and tax credits for tuition are other ways of offering parents and students choice.

While many policies can offer some form of choice, "school choice" is often used as exclusively a synonym for school vouchers, which allow parents to use taxpayer money to send their students to private schools, including religious schools. Many charter school supporters don't support vouchers. President Obama, for example, has encouraged the growth of charter schools as a key part of his education agenda, and Education Secretary Arne Duncan has praised charter schools for offering students and parents choice.

But Obama isn't a voucher supporter. He argues that those programs don't have a proven track record and take the focus off improving public schools.

Charter schools and traditional public schools both get money for every student who enrolls. So if students leave traditional public schools for charter schools, that state money goes with them. Public schools no longer have to spend money to educate those students, but school districts might have a difficult time reducing expenses by the same degree.

The growth of charter schools poses a financial risk for public school districts in economically depressed areas, Moody's Investment Services reported in The report focused on districts that were already troubled. Charter schools are public schools , and in many cases, they receive less per pupil than traditional public schools. Because funding follows the student to a charter school, a student who opts for a charter school rather than a traditional public school means less total funding for traditional schools, and more for the charter.

Forty-two states and the District of Columbia have laws allowing charter schools. State laws vary widely, though, on how many charter schools are allowed in the state, who can give charter schools permission to operate, and whether for-profit charter schools are permitted.

States in blue allow charter schools; states in gray do not. In , just over half of charter schools — 56 percent — were in urban areas, with another 24 percent in the suburbs. Urban schools make up a much higher proportion of charter schools than they do of public schools as a whole. Those proportions have stayed steady even as the number of charter schools has grown. Data is for the to academic year. Charter schools have long had a presence albeit smaller in suburbs and are expanding into rural areas.

Some charter schools are online, meaning students can be located anywhere in the state and take classes there. Resistance to charter schools has typically been higher in the suburbs, because those school districts are perceived as being less problematic than the urban school districts where charters have thrived. Montgomery County, Maryland, a wealthy suburb of Washington, DC, drew headlines for opening a charter school in It's closing at the end of the to academic year due to budget deficits.

This is a very active area of research, and some studies have conflicting results. Overall, many studies have found that charter school students aren't doing worse than their peers in traditional schools. Whether they're doing better — and by how much — is hotly debated. A study from the Center for Research on Education Outcomes at Stanford University of charter students in 27 states found that students advance more quickly in reading at charter schools than at traditional public schools.

Students learned math at about the same rate. They also found that charter schools produced better results for students of color and poor students than for traditional students. The impact of charter schools is particularly pronounced on black students who live in poverty, they found. White and Asian students learned less at charter schools than they did at traditional public schools.

A study from the Education Department's Institute of Education Sciences found that student results varied significantly by school.

On average, charter middle schools did neither better nor worse at improving student achievement. The study found charter schools made a difference for low-income or low-scoring students, but that high-income or high-achieving students did worse than their peers in traditional public schools.

A study of New York City's charter schools found much more dramatic effects. The study compared students who won lottery admission to charter schools in the city with students who did not. Students who were admitted improved their test scores every year relative to their counterparts who were not.

By graduation, they had closed 86 percent of the achievement gap between poor city students and their rich suburban counterparts in math. In reading, they closed about 66 percent of the achievement gap.

New Orleans is a laboratory of charter school experimentation. After Hurricane Katrina devastated the city and its school system, the city's Recovery School District — which had focused on New Orleans' worst schools before the storm — was given control of most of its schools. As a global nonprofit working in over 80 countries, Cognia serves 36, institutions, nearly 25 million students, and five million educators every day. Do Charter Schools Work? Why Choose a Public Charter School? Why Charter Schools Work Charter schools work better than traditional schools for a variety of reasons.

So why do charter schools work? Here are the top 3 reasons: Curriculum — Public charter schools have more flexibility when it comes to curriculum and teaching methods. While they still have to participate in state required standardized testing, they can focus on helping your child achieve their academic goals using alternative methods, such as project based learning. Yet when participants were provided a two-sentence definition of a charter school, 52 percent approved.

Today charters educate 3 million pupils a million more sit on waiting lists in 43 states. But as some new charters open a year, the sides grow more polarized. How did charters get so muddy?

First, a definition. Charter schools are public schools, tuition-free and open to all on a first-come, first-serve basis, or by lottery. But the charter grants autonomy to develop. For example, many charters have longer school days and school years than their peers.

It is the good and the bad that charter schools have done with that autonomy that has largely fueled the charter battle. Looking back, a schism over charters seems inevitable because its roots are so tangled.

In the s, conservative economists and liberal academics alike argued for school choice, albeit for different reasons. In Capitalism and Freedom , published in , the Nobel Prize—winning economist Milton Friedman proposed that the government provide needy families with vouchers that they could redeem at private schools. This would allow market forces, not the government, to shape public education — causing failing schools to close and compelling individuals and organizations to open competitors.

He proposed that states grant charters to create new, experimental programs and departments at existing public schools. The response? When Budde resurrected his charter idea in , he caught the attention of Albert Shanker, longtime president of the American Federation of Teachers. Shanker piqued the curiosity of a group of progressive educators and policymakers in Minnesota. Teachers unions feared a lack of accountability and charged that charters would prove a back-door entrance to private-school vouchers.

California passed a charter law in ; six states followed in Bill Clinton signed a federal support program for charters in , and every president since has advocated for school choice. But as charter schools bloomed, the laboratory theory largely gave way to the reality of a parallel education system. Charters collaborated with public schools far less often than teachers unions liked, and liberal legislators — historic allies — began to side with the unions more readily.

Competition bred animosity. The top criticism of charters is that they rob funding from district schools.

In , the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation concluded that the district—charter balance had been stable — 3. But district schools argue that this still makes it harder to cover their relatively unchanged operating costs. For example, if a school loses two students per grade, they lose the per-pupil funding but fixed administrative costs remain the same. But some states, Massachusetts included, have even reimbursed public schools the funds they lost to charters. Opponents also cite the high turnover rate: Nationwide, charters lose 24 percent of their teachers each year, double the rate of traditional public schools.

Longer hours and less pay, for one. The average Success Academy teacher, for example, leaves after four years. But the attrition gap is narrowing, and these numbers are also slightly misleading: When charters franchise, many veteran faculty leave existing schools to ensure the new locations maintain the quality of the original. Still, high turnover tends to diminish student achievement.