A charter school is a publicly funded independent educational resource for a community. It can be established by the community group, an organization of parents or a group of teachers. It must follow the terms of a charter by local, regional or national authorities or oversight groups. These are tuition-free public school, often called a “school of choice”. It is called so because parents have a choice of sending their children to the charter school rather than any public school assigned by the authorities. Though being a choice, pros and cons of charter school still exists.
The benefit of charter school is that it operates outside the rules and regulation that other type of schools is forced to follow. They are still accountable for the academic results and must prove the evidence of their capabilities else the permission to run can be cancelled. The charter’s school overall mission is to improve existing educational institutional system providing some openness to the teaching and learning system. The pros and cons of charter school in the following post will give you some clear idea about the schooling system in case you want your children to get involved in such school.
Charter School Pros and Cons
Let’s look at the pros and cons of the charter school as the base of selection of schools.
Pros of Charter School
- Another choice to parents:
Choices are great thing. You know how your kids behave and what mindset s/he has. If you get to choose between the schools that will be helpful for your child, developing the personality will be easier. As the charter school is tuition-free and has different methods of teaching and learning, it can help your child grow. Innovation is what drives the basics of charter school. - Atmosphere similar to private school
Private schools are known to provide the much-needed attention to the students. Charter school has small classes with limited number of students. Small classes mean a better 1to 1attention to the students. This helps improve the performance of the students. The unbound nature of the charter school allows the school to provide the extra specialized classes or alternative approaches of education to the much-needed ones providing them the equal opportunity to grow. - Allowing for competition
It is often believed that competition will help the educators to improve the way of teaching. Though it doesn’t hold true all the time, competition has made the charter schools more conscious when offering the curriculum to the students. Public school seems to show less attention towards the needs of the students while charter school focuses on student’s ability. - They are well-supported
Charter schools are well-supported by the community, parents and teachers as a whole. Monetarily public school might be the one receiving the funds and backing from the government more and charter school might seem a little expensive. But comparing them in a long run proves that they are somewhat equal. The participation of the teacher and parents are also quite good. - Less “teaching to the test” approach
Unlike other schools under the rules and regulations of the state, charter school is free to set its own curriculum and the pattern of teaching. The focus can be on the overall development of the personality of a student or in a single topic. With this, there is very less teaching for the test involved. Students aren’t also compelled to study the same topic same way to just pass the test.
Cons of Charter Schools
- Corruption
Corruption is the most dangerous thing when it comes to charter school. As charter school is not governed by any government body, keeping an eye on the investment is harder. Charter schools can have up to 4 times the investment of a private school and still be not able to accept any enrollment of student. Corruption is very bad. - Fail due to no parental involvement
The parental involvement keeps the charter school running. It is not abided by any rules for the parent to enroll their student in the charter school. If the parent does not choose to enroll their child in the charter school, the charter school ultimately fails. - Promote less diverse environment
While in public schools, the children from many diverse areas, races, religion etc. study under same roof. But as charter schools are choices of parent, the diversity seems to get lost as parents might choose the charter schools with same race, religion and locality as theirs. - Charter schools have different rules
Some schools might just enroll students with high performance leaving behind the ones with the low scores. This causes the public schools to lose money as the funding is tied to the student’s performance level. This makes the state to cut the funding to the public schools keeping the low performing students in dilemma.
[ Further Reading ] Pros and Cons of Traditional School
Conclusion
As a conclusion, the involvement of the parents and teacher altogether is very much important for the students from the charter school. If the enrollment of student is kept fair, the students are sure to be benefitted from the learning method in the school. It is better to focus on the ability development of the student rather than making money.