Charter Schools

Board of Education is a very important landmark case. This case addressed the constitutionality of segregation in public schools back in the early 1950s. When the case was heard in a U.S. District Court a three-judge panel ruled in favor of the school boards. The plaintiffs then appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. The Supreme Court went through all its procedures and eventually decided that “Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal” ().

Have you ever seen innocent kids and disappointed parents crying in front of happy smile of other families? That sad image is usually caught in the lottery of any charter school. Ted Cruz said in School Choice Week “ And yet, there are millions of kids in the waiting list for charter school. We should not put our future in the wait list.”

Emily who is white and Anthony a black student who got accepted on a waitlist. These cases show the unfairness within a system that is presumably impartial. The fact that charter schools accept students on a lottery, leave many disproportionately black and Latino students without the opportunity of being selected or drawn. White students usually do not need to leave their suburban public school so there are less people vying to attend a charter school in their area. There is a larger population of black and latino students seeking to leave “failure factories,” as many minority groups live in a neighborhood with inadequate schools.

Carnoy, Loeb, and Smith (2003) found a weakness in the relationships between TAKS scores and other outcomes such as high school graduation rates and scores on college entrance exams. Other researchers (Klein, Hamilton, McCaffrey, & Steecher, 2000) analyzed increases in scores in Texas on the NAEP, increases that they state political leaders attributed to the accountability system, and found that Texas score improvements in mathematics at grade 8 are not significantly different from those of other states that did not have strong accountability systems in place. In fact their data show evidence that the achievement gap between white students and underrepresented minorities actually increased. Some argue that the data show that the accountability program actually negatively impacts schools that were already academically behind before the implementation of the accountability system (Fassold,

Charter schools are a different type of school that is helpful to some students but not all. What a charter school is, they are privately managed, taxpayer funded schools which are made up from the community. However charter schools are not like private schools they are in fact outlined after public schools. Charter schools are for students who want to achieve a high level education. The schools are open to all children, they don’t charge tuition and there are no special requirements for them to attend.

According to the article, “A dozen problems with charter schools”, the author states that, “Far too many are cash cows. When Pennsylvania is seen by hedge fund managers as prime ground for “investment opportunities” in charter schools, you know something is terribly wrong. And when four of the top political campaign donors in the entire state are connected to charter schools, you have to start asking why.” This means that charter schools take advantage of the government and use them to get more money than they would if they were a public school. Some may argue that this information is false, but it has been proven that charter schools tend to receive more money than public schools.

According to the Truth about Charter Schools, charter schools are required by law to generally accept all students who want to attend, including students with disabilities and english learners, regardless of previous academic performance. However according to Gary Miron, charter schools “nationally serve fewer students with disabilities” - eight to ten percent of their average students in comparison to district schools, which serve thirteen point one percent. Charter schools receive financial funding from the state they are thereby considered to be public schools in the eye of the state.

School choice is the idea that parents should be able to choose which school they want to send their children to, whether they enroll them to private, charter, parochial or virtual schools, or just decide to homeschool them. “Charter schools are our best hope for meaningful change in education. Yet, many parents are leery of charter schools or confused by them.” (“Should all Schools”) Some politicians and teachers believe that school choice takes away money from them since they do use tax dollars.

Residential segregation has a profound effect on the quality of local academics. A study conducted, showed “families and schools in America’s inner cities and rural places simply lack many of the resources that promote educational achievement and attainment” (Roscigno, Tomaskovic-Devey, and Crowley 2006:2139). This lack of resources is caused by the low taxation of property based on the income level of its residents. This is a vicious cycle that continues to trap individuals and their families in these areas.

Basing school funding on property tax leads to unequal opportunities and environments for students, even though the government may claim it is not up to them, there needs to be a drastic change. Currently, taxes collected from the surrounding communities fund public school districts. Public schools get financed mainly by the property tax of the surrounding houses. “Resources available to school districts relied heavily on local property wealth, and property wealth per pupil varied greatly, as it continues today”

n “The Failure of American Public Education” (February 01 1993), John Hood explains the sundry perspectives on the American education system. Hood tactfully uses cause and effect to demonstrate the viewpoints of a myriad of individuals regarding American schools and their approaches to effectively educating students; he explains how “free-market thinkers believe that applying market competition to the public schools will solve many of America’s educational problems” (Hood) ; “critics believe that public education reforms fail because they are compromised or sabotaged by the education lobbies—teacher associations, administrators, and the legislators in their pockets” (Hood) and “many conservatives believe that American public education is in

Introduction With a recent increase in presidential power and a new presidential cabinet, concerns have began to arise regarding state rights and independence. One of these concerns is school choice in the form of school vouchers. The use of school vouchers has been a state decision, and Texas has always been a school voucher free state. Not only the national government favors private-school voucher legislation (with Betsy DeVos as the new United States Secretary of Education); so does Texas. Texas’ Lieutenant Governor, Dan Patrick, urges the private-school voucher bill (SB 3) to pass the Texas House (as it has already passed the Senate).

Traditional public schools are generally much bigger than charter schools, giving them the ability to enroll more students and incorporate a variety of extracurricular activities. According to Peterson (2017) “Charter schools are funded by governments, but operate independently. This means that charter schools must persuade parents to select them instead of a neighborhood district school” (p.1). By having to recruit students for enrollment, charter schools target the most motivated students. Since charter schools are smaller than traditional public schools, they tend to run out of seating fast, therefore they enroll their students using a lottery.

Charter Schools are publicly funded independent private schools established by teachers, parents, or community groups, under the terms of a charter with a local or national authority. Charter Schools are public schools of choice, meaning that families chose them for their kids. Also teachers who work at a charter school usually fall under more flexible certification requirements than other public school teachers. Charter schools are often similar to magnet schools they often offer special programs such as Math, Engineering, and Environmental science. Also if The Charter school you are trying to enroll in gets too popular they will sometimes use a lottery system which will fill in the vacancies.

There are public schools all over the world and those in public schools are not getting the proper education that they need. It seems public schools only provide the public with the bare minimum. This bare minimum can become very discouraging to parents, students and the entire public community in which the school is. Most Supreme Court rulings agree that school districts across the nation, and across the world, really only need to provide the bare minimum legally. This present an issue, if the professionals are only supposed to give the bare minimum then they themselves will be given the bare minimum.