Charter Schools: The Demise of Public Education
In 1983, the National Commission on Excellence in Education declared that the American public educational system was at risk. Their report, A Nation at Risk, indicated that content in classes, testing standards, the length of school, teaching, and fiscal support were all issues that needed to be fixed. After years of attempts at reforming public education, the idea of charter schools was introduced. These schools aim to account for higher student performance by teaching unconventionally, but efficiently and providing more choice for a student’s curriculum. Although this idea seems like an educational breakthrough, charter schools are a failed attempt to restructure America’s public educational system.
Despite that some charter schools have shown success, the majority of them are unable to fulfill their desired goals. The curriculum and teaching methods do not provide efficient learning for their students. As a result of the poor teaching styles and curriculum, charter schools have shown lower academic scores than public schools. These schools also cost federal and local governments an immense amount of money while simultaneously hurting public schools financially. Charter schools, despite their intentionally good purpose, are an unsuccessful method of public education.
The overall concept of teaching and learning in these institutions has created failure. Students who attend these schools are given more freedom when choosing their classes. Instead of having more required classes, as the NCEE report highly recommended, charter schools have lesser restrictions on classes such as English, Mathematics, Science, and Social Studies. In one instance, charter Schools in Pennsylvania, “cover 29 fewer days of reading material on average, and 50 fewer days of math than traditional public schools” (A Dozen Problems with Charter Schools). The idea of choice is a very American idea that is appealing to charter students but does not always equate to success and achievement. On the surface this idea is innovative, but students are not receiving the full amount of learning as public schools do. Because of the shortage of these classes, they miss valuable learning opportunities that deprive them of knowledge they could be acquiring in public schools. If schools have shorter amounts of schooling, they will do worse in their classes. Therefore, this popular idea of choice proves to be unsatisfactory.
In terms of innovative teaching techniques, teachers are still searching for any significant methods of teaching. While teachers are in search of these new teaching methods, they experiment different methods with students. Since there has yet to be any successful techniques, students have been testing dummies for new teaching techniques. This entire attempt of finding new and successful ways to teach has cost students their capacity to learn.
When looking at the teachers themselves, they are less experienced and less qualified compared to public school teachers. Public school teachers have an average of 5 years more of teaching compared to charter school teachers. Additionally, 48% of public school teachers had master’s degrees whereas 37% of charter school teachers had master’s degrees (Schools In Perspective). If all students went to public schools, they would receive better teaching from more experienced and qualified teachers.
Charter schools have aimed to produce a higher standard of intelligence for their students, but they have instead have done worse than public schools. When compared to the School Performance Profile, the average score for “traditional public schools was 77.1, but for charter schools, it was 66.4, and cyber-charter schools came in at a low 46.8” (Are Charter Schools the Answer?). The purpose of these schools is to simply be the top academic schools. From this point of view, charter schools are not only lower than the standard score of 70, but they are doing worse than public schools.
Although some may say this idea has its’ kinks and the grades will eventually improve, charter schools have not shown any further improvement in their scores. In the 2012–2013 school year, “a majority, 51 percent of the charter school open 10 years or more have SPP scores below 70 2012–2013, a majority, 51 percent of the charter school open 10 years or more have SPP scores below 70” (A Dozen Problems with Charter Schools). The inefficient teaching and classes are a possible reason for this stagnant inadequacy. Another possibility could be that the head officials of these schools are not motivated by their low scores to do better and show a lack of care towards their students. And therefore, their primary motivation is not the intellectual well-being of their students. Overall, charter schools are performing worse than public schools.
Charter schools are also negatively impacting the local and federal economies and public schools. While the number of charter Schools is growing nationwide, there is a greater distribution of students for all classrooms. Therefore there are fewer students for each classroom in both types of schools. In terms of class size, there is an average difference of 3.5 students from charter schools and public schools when examining primary, middle, and high schools (Are Charter Schools the Answer?). However, the money being given to schools by the state and federal governments is increasing as well. If you have children that move out of a public school and into a charter school, there are two classrooms for the same amount of children. This means that there is double the cost for teachers, heating, electricity, school materials, and the actual building itself. “Nonetheless, peer-reviewed research showed that losing students to charter schools negatively impacted the finances of public school districts in Albany and Buffalo, New York, in the 2009–10 school year. The researchers estimated that as a result of charter schools, Buffalo Public Schools lost between $67.0 and $76.8 million in 2009–10 — or between 8.6 and 9.9 percent of total revenues” (Charter Schools In Perspective).
The amount of money given to each school is then decreased in order to support both schools while still trying to be on track with the budget. While some charter schools may receive reimbursements from private companies or investors, if the school is run by a company, public schools are unable to receive additional funding. It is there, in the public schools, where there is a major lack of funding for their schools. A study in the 2006–2007 school year did find that public schools were funded more from federal, state, and local sources, from $1500 to $4,000 (Charter Schools in Perspective). Although this is indeed more, public schools also have to provide for bus transportation and school meals which leave less room for money that is used for strictly educational purposes.
Ironically, the money is needed in these public schools because they are the schools that are proving to be academically better than charter schools. If students from the same area are consolidated into one public school, there is no extra need for paying double. Another benefit from this consolidation is that the students who originally went to charter schools would receive proper schooling.
While charter schools are an inadequate method of schooling for public education, they indeed have solved the issue of poor education. These schools have tested out new forms of education to experiment which ways students learn best. Although charter schools did not necessarily find any successful methods, they reinforced the idea that public schools do have successful teaching methods. When taking into account of class restrictions, it is more beneficial to take a public school type approach because students perform better when they are required to take a certain amount of classes. Areas that public schools are doing better than charter schools need to be extended and further stressed in order to produce better schooling for students. Thus, it is important to keep having new reformations of schooling, in order to test the good and bad elements of schooling. Although this opinion favors charter schools in a favorable light, it is important to remember that charter schools are not successful at teaching students.
