Thursday, October 15, 2009

Charter Schools

Throughout my research on charter schools I found a lot of conflicting information and I also found some concrete results that are hard to argue with. These results are in favor of charter schools, but I do have my own opinions that I believe are possible explanations for these results. First I would like to discuss some background information on charter schools and I will focus on New Jersey charter schools. Charter schools are public schools that operate independently from district schools. In New Jersey, they may be organized by a group of teachers, parents, community groups or institutions of higher education. These groups enter into an agreement with the state board of education and receive a performance contract called a “charter”. Charter schools are public schools and may not charge tuition. They are required to be open to all students on a space-available basis. Students from the district of residence or from the region of residence (districts contiguous to the district in which a charter school operates) are given preference before non-residents students can be admitted. The charter school curriculum must address the New Jersey Core Curriculum Content Standards. Charters must make available the educational program as prescribed by an Individualized Education Program (IEP) for students with educational disabilities. New Jersey charter schools are required to meet the same academic standards as all public schools. They must adhere to the New Jersey Core Curriculum Content Standards and participate in the statewide assessment program in grades 4, 8 and 11. All teachers, principals and support staff engaged in classroom activity must hold appropriate licenses.
Charters are initially granted for a four-year term. If satisfactory progress is made, charters may be renewed for additional five-year terms. The renewal process involves a review of the renewal application and annual reports, student performance on the statewide assessment program, monitoring, comments from the local community and interviews. Failing charter schools are closed down. Charter schools receive a payment directly from the school district of residence for each student enrolled equal to 90 percent of the district school’s budget per student for the specific grade level. Charter schools are also eligible to receive federal and state funding.
In New Jersey there are over 50 approved charter schools located throughout the state. The average enrollment in a charter school is 193 students and the average length of a school day in a charter school is slightly over 7 hours. The performance of New Jersey charters on NJASK and HSPA math and language arts overall exceeds the public schools in the same districts. Charters are open to anyone so we can’t use the argument that the best and brightest only attend. Those that do seek out another option obviously have a desire to be educated so they most likely are students that will try harder than the average public schools student. As with public schools there are low and high performing charters, but low performing charters can be closed down so they will most likely have a stronger desire to succeed. Also charter schools are exempt from state regulations except those pertaining to assessment, testing, civil rights and student health and safety. The autonomy gives charter schools the latitude to strive for high academic performance, to better serve a community’s needs, and to spur innovation by trying new teaching methods. I feel this is an advantage over public schools. Another interesting point is that the charter schools tend to be in poor performing districts and these are the schools that the scores are being compared to. I do also believe that anything that stimulates competition is a good thing.

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