Hello, readers, and welcome to the final installment of the Education Station. Throughout these past few months, we have examined crucial civic issues regarding education, and we have addressed potential solutions to these pressing matters. In this final blog, I will be analyzing the major debate surrounding charter schools. These institutions are independent schools that receive public funding, and they are typically started by parents, teachers, and local community members. The funding of charter schools remains a highly contentious issue across the nation.

Charter schools possess much more freedom over developing their curriculum when compared to conventional public schools, but they still must operate under a binding contract, or a charter, that sets certain standards that the schools must meet. Hypothetically speaking, charter schools are created to give parents options for educating their children rather than paying additional money to send the kids to private schools. The increase in options for parents aims to overhaul the old-fashioned education system, perhaps bringing competition between charter schools as they vie for the most promising young students.

Supporters of charter schools appreciate that publicly-funded schools can finally be held accountable for the performance of their students. In the case of poor performance in typical public schools, the districts often face little to no consequence for providing an inadequate education to their students. In contrast, the charters of charter schools act as student achievement benchmarks. If the students perform below the expectations that have been set by local governments, the charter school has violated its charter and could be closed down as a result. Instead of seeing ineffective schools fail the students and taxpayers year after year, supporters of charter schools are optimistic that bad schools can be dealt with, ensuring that funds only go to schools that educate students well.

Charter schools largely perform at the same level as public schools, but they perform better in some select areas. For example, charter schools in California produce the best results for Hispanic students, a demographic that largely performs poorly in public schools. In the United States, the educational divide between races is major with 87 percent of white students outperforming black students nationally. Supporters of charter schools believe that these new schools may hold the key to creating a fairer system of education where students of all races and backgrounds can prosper equally well at schools of their own choices. By holding schools accountable for the education that the provide to their students, supporters of charter schools believe that the entire institution of public schooling could be improved.

Opponents of the implementation of charter schools believe that they are not the cure-all for the American public education system. In the 2012-2013 school year, charter schools received an average Student Performance Profile (SPP) score of 66.4, a score lower than the 77.1 rating obtained by traditional public schools. Additionally, there is fear that charter schools may provide an unstable environment for students. Charter schools have an alarmingly high turnover rate for teachers, with some estimates as high as 20-25 percent of teachers being fired each year. This creates a classroom environment of competition, not mutual learning and respect between students and teachers. To secure their jobs, teachers may be much more focused on preparing students to perform well on mandated exams instead of actually providing a valuable education that prepares students for the future.

Additionally, opponents of charter schools believe that the constant creation and destruction of schools will create too much turbulence in the public school system. Parents will have little knowledge of which charter school is best suited for their children, and the persistent elimination of charter schools can cause even more confusion and frustration among parents and students. The maintenance and the closure of each charter school is weighed on a yearly basis, potentially causing the majority of schools to become fiercely competitive with each other, no longer focusing on the students. The freedom of charter schools also sets the stage for fraud, an issue seen as one charter school in Pittsburgh is currently under investigation due to the questionable financial actions of the school board members.

While charter schools may offer a solution to bridge the educational divide in America, I think that the widespread implementation of these schools must be delayed before more research can be done on the subject. The apparent freedom of charter schools is key to the benefits that they provide to students, but this freedom also opens the schools to fraud and other deceptive practices that are detrimental to the students.

Also, the high turnover rate for teachers at charter schools is concerning. From my years as a student in public education, having the same teachers every year calmed students as they knew what to expect before beginning each grade level. By mixing up the staff every year, charter schools are gambling with their students’ education. Charter schools are forced to make hasty decisions to quickly improve student performance, and this urgency may lead to the mass firing of teachers and the disruption of the school system. I am skeptical that charter schools are the schools of the future, but I am hopeful that more efforts will be made to reform the American education system.

This concludes the final issue of the Education Station. I have greatly enjoyed discussing these pressing civic issues with all of you, and I hope that you are now more educated about education. Thank you for reading the Education Station!