Essay Sample for Free: Charter Schools in the United States of America

Charter schools in the United States of America are the schools that offer education without charging any amount to the pupils who take the examinations that are mandated by the state. The chartered schools in the US have fewer rules, and this enables them to operate more freely and this makes them receive lower funding from the state as opposed to other schools in the country (Berliner, 2014). The charter schools have fewer statutes and regulations than the traditional schools. The amount that the chartered schools receive is a fixed amount per student, and this reduces the financial capabilities of the schools. The chartered schools are either profit or non-profit schools, and the state ensures that only the non-profit chartered schools receive donations but from private sources (Orfield, 2012). Lack of donations to the chartered schools affects their financial capabilities, and this affects the level of education in such schools. The schools are also run in a different manner as opposed to all other traditional schools.

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Most of the chartered public schools have failed due to challenges facing them such as financial challenges, roll student population enrollment and poor academic performance. The fact that more chartered public schools have been put up exacerbates the situation. The researcher, however, noted that New Orleans chartered schools unlike its counterparts chartered public schools performs better even than traditional district schools. In this article, the research proposes an Action Plan Research that can help in formulating an educational curriculum almost the same as that for New Orleans Chartered Schools to be adopted by other chartered public schools. The curriculum is expected to address the existing challenges by creating friendly rules and regulations that will ensure collaboration of the staffs and all the stakeholders in setting educational goals and developing strategic plans to meet them.

According to Winters (2015), the main work of the public chartered schools is usually to educate the children in New Orleans chartered schools. Parents and teachers prefer to take their children to the chartered schools since the schools offer a specialized curriculum that enable the students to develop a special interest in education and that aid in the holistic growth of the students to tackle the issues in the society. Some of the specialized curriculums that the chartered schools offer are in the fields of mathematics, arts, and vocational training. Moreover, Berliner (2014) also submit that chartered schools aid the society by providing the easy way in which the society can enjoy a better education and at a lower cost. This becomes of great help to the students that come from poor background and who cannot afford the high costs of traditional education. Additionally, attending the chartered schools is by choice, and this enables the society to have a variety of the quality of education that they want their children to acquire as Cullen (2013) puts it.

Ladd (2012) joins the discussion about the chartered schools explain that the schools can be found through various means, and the common way is when parents, teachers, and activists come up together and decide that it is in the best interest of the community to start a chartered school for the community. Additionally, the running of the chartered schools is done through the universities, government entities and the non-profit groups. This ensures that the schools remain affordable to the parents and that there is proper management of resources in the schools. This ensures that the cash that the schools have got properly used and that they are properly channeled to the issues relating to education. The proper management of the chartered schools ensures that the running of the school conforms to the regulations.

Sullivan (2013) confirms that performance of the chartered schools is up, and more and more students are joining the schools in the urge to acquire education. The development of the New Orleans chartered schools is as a result of Hurricane Katrina that affected the most parts of New Orleans. The Hurricane destroyed most parts of the town, and this led to the fall of the whole public school system in the area. The district schools then became extinct. After the Katrina was over, the nation decided to build the New Orleans Recovery Schools that replaced the traditional district schools. The recovery schools were later converted to New Orleans chartered schools that serve the students in the area to offer education. Comparison of the performance between the New Orleans chartered schools and the pre-Katrina public schools prove that the chartered schools perform much better as Goldring (2013). This is due to the high enrollment rates and the high scores on the state mandated tests that the students are given.

The number of chartered schools has grown from a small number of 500 in 16 states to about 6,400 by the year 2014. More than 600, about 7 percent, chartered public schools opened and helped in serving about 288,000 students in the United States, 13 percent, of the total 2.5 million students (Alexander, 2011). However, the opening of the new chartered public schools led to the closure of other chartered public schools due to various challenges among them being a low enrollment of the student, low academic performance and financial difficulties in the schools. Statistics according to the waiting lists confirm that the number of pupils on the waiting list has grown from an average of about 233 in the year 2009 to an average of about 277 in the year 2012 (Cullen, 2013). The placement in the chartered public schools is usually done through the lottery, and this gives every student to have a fair chance of being admitted to the schools.

The excellent performance in the New Orleans chartered schools has received appreciation from some political leaders in the country, and they advocate for the system at New Orleans chartered schools to be introduced in all the schools in the country (Fabricant, 2012). This would then ensure that the schools acquire the high-quality education, and this would then help the students to acquire skills that would enable them to tackle societal problems by developing practical knowledge in the society (Hattie, 2013). New Orleans chartered schools perform much better than other district schools in the country. There are a variety of reasons that makes the New Orleans chartered schools to perform much better than the district schools in the American education system.

New Orleans chartered schools to perform much better than the district schools2.3.1 CompetitionOne of the reasons is that the school leaders of the school encourage the concept of competition among the schools and the students. The schools leaders, therefore, psych up their students to engage in internal, and competition with one another and this enables the students to improve their performance (Wolf, 2015). Additionally, the school leaders admit the fact that they have to perform in order to increase the numbers of students in their respective schools. This therefore ensures that every school leader engages his students and teacher in the improvement of quality education to outshine other schools in the area. The end results in the excellent performance that their students give.

The second reason the New Orleans chartered schools perform better than their counterpart district schools is that the schools leaders make the financial gain as motivation for the teachers and the school in general. This is because the teachers and the school leaders appreciate the fact that every extra student that joins their schools makes the schools get extra funding from the local, state and federal sources. The principles make the admission of the students anonymous with the taxpayer money. This makes the principals to engage in the improving th...