Comparative Essay Example: Charter Schools vs. Traditional Public Schools

The debate of public vs. private schools goes on with scholars addressing ad comparing various aspects of both types of schools. The research will examine how these schools are regarding performance, financial stability and availability of resources. The debate continues about which is better at providing quality education for American students. There are those who find private schools to be better at the provision of education while others feel that traditional private schools remain the best. Evidence indicates that up to ten percent of American students which translates to about five million students attend private schools. The choice for a private school is often dependent on some factors including a more flexible curriculum experience, religion or same sex education. One the other hand public schools will accommodate about fifty million students in the United States. Despite the debate, there are public schools that give the same quality education or even better than private schools. These are charter schools which unlike traditional public schools will account for their autonomy through their academic and financial results. Therefore, it is evident that charter schools have more autonomy and give better quality education than traditional public schools.

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Charter schools are types of public schools whose operations take place under the control of a charter or a performance act. The contract will free charter schools from the regulations that are used to govern traditional public schools, and it will hold these schools accountable for their financial and academic results (Bulkley, and Jennifer). Charter schools will have more autonomy compared to traditional public schools. Thus they have the authority to determine their budgets, the levels of staffing, they ascertain the length of their school day and the school year, the sizes of the class and the school and their curriculum choices (Bulkley, and Jennifer). However, the autonomy does not come free, and charter schools need to prove that they are deserving through accountability of giving forth certain results, and the regular reviews of their charters (Bulkley, and Jennifer). The authorizing agency may decide to renew them charter or revoke it according to the performance of the school regarding the various evaluation strategies. Various authorities are often in charge of providing the charters including institutions of higher education, education agencies within the state, municipal governments, special boards that engage in awarding charters and local school districts (Bulkley, and Jennifer).

Just like traditional public schools, charter schools remain free for all students to enroll but it is necessary for parents to choose to enroll their children in these schools. However, the state laws have no dictation on the instructional approach or program that a charter school will adhere to (Hoxby). It means that the educational philosophies and missions will vary from one school to another. It also means that the type of student these schools serve and the community they reach out to will be different from one school to the other. Being a type of public school, they remain publicly funded, and the students must be exposed to testing programs that are employed across the state. However, the funding of charter schools is by fee-per-student (Hoxby). It could be concluded that they apply the elements of both public and private schools because they are open to every student, they are funded publicly, but they need to attract as many students as they can because they get paid fees per every student. It means that failure to attract the right number of the student will risk the closure of such schools. The record of the first charter school dates back to 1992 and despite the existence of these schools for more than twenty years in the United States education system debate still, exists on whether they prove a better form of education to the students than traditional public schools (Hoxby). Those who endorse charter schools propose that these schools contribute to the overall development of the student and the teacher than traditional public schools do. They do so through the improvement of the achievement of students, provide a variety of school choices and number to parents, provide a better opportunity for innovation especially for the students and the promotion of competition with traditional public schools (Buddin, and Ron). However, those against these schools propose that they reduce or deny traditional public schools adequate financing and human resources. They claim that these schools have resulted in increased segregation and that there is no evidence of real improvement on student performance in charter schools (Buddin, and Ron).

Up to forty states employ the use of charter schools and by November 2009 statistics indicated that up to five thousand charter schools were operational in the United States (Buddin, and Ron). These schools were home to more than one and a half million students at that time. These numbers continue to increase as more students enroll in charter schools (Buddin, and Ron). The issue of better academic performance of charter schools than traditional public schools continues to create a controversy. However numerous studies have been conducted to show a positive impact on the achievement of students in charter schools than in public schools.

As Hoxby states Compared to students in the matched public school, charter students are 5.2 percent more likely to be proficient in reading and 3.2 percent more likely to be proficient in math on their state's exams (1). According to the author charter schools are more likely to raise the achievement of students and especially those from poor or Hispanic backgrounds. Many of the charter schools will serve students that seem disadvantaged or poor in the American states. States that give autonomy and develop an efficient system for charter schools provide the appropriate environment that ensures positive achievement of students from these schools compared to public schools. Hoxby continues to express that in Arizona, fourth-grade charter students are about 10 percent more likely to be proficient in reading and math than students in the matched regular public schools (1). The author conducts a study to identify the performance of ninety-nine percent of fourth-grade students in charter schools around the United States and their performance compared to traditional public school students near them.

The study compares the charter school to a traditional public school with a similar racial composition and a traditional public school the student would have opted for if he or she was not attending the charter school (Hoxby). Results from the study used an approximation of ninety-nine percent of charter school students in fourth grade and compared to their counterparts in public schools. The study indicates that charter school students are 5.2 percent more likely to be proficient in reading and 3.2 percent more proficient in mathematics when it comes to state examples compared to the traditional public school fourth-grade students (Hoxby). Moreover, there is evidence of better performance in proficiency especially for students of charter schools that have been operational for a longer time. The study indicated that the proficiency is at two and a half percent for schools that have operated from one to four years (Hoxby). It is at 5.2 percent for those schools that have been open for five to eight years and at just above ten percent for schools that have been functioning for nine to eleven years. Another study conducted in 2009 by Abdulkadiroglu and his colleagues analyze the performance of middle and senior high school charter students in Boston while comparing them to those of traditional public school students (Bettinger). The study analyzes the performance of these students on the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System and identifies that there is a significant effect of charter schools on the achievement of their students with the charter schools showing an overall better performance in English or language arts and mathematics than those from traditional public schools (Bettinger). Another study carried out by Dobbie and Fryer in 2009 where the study uses participants from the Promise Academy Charter Schools running under the sponsorship of the Harlem Childrens Zone. It compares the achievement of students who got admitted to the school and those who did not get a chance (Bettinger).

It analyzes up to four hundred and seventy students from New York as they enter their sixth grade and measures their performance in the sixth grade, the seventh grade and the eighth grade with the use of statewide tests in mathematics and English/language arts (Hoxby, and Sonali). The study identified that those who were enrolled into the academy attained higher test scores in the three grades than students who did not attend the Academy (Hoxby, and Sonali). The study also compared the performance of the students while in the eighth grade and discovered that the overall improvement in the mathematics tests would be compared to moving a student from an average performance of fifty percent to that of seventy-one percent (Hoxby, and Sonali).

Another study conducted by Tuttle in 2010 analyzed the performance of students in The Knowledge is Power Program charter schools and compared to those who remained in the local district schools (Bettinger). The study used data from twenty-two institutions from KIPP charter schools across the United States. Results indicated a positive impact of up to eighteen schools in mathematics and up to fifteen schools in reading. The study further showed that by the third year of study in the KIPP schools the results were comparable to moving a student from an average percentile of thirty to that of forty-eight (Bettinger). It is evident that charter schools produce students with higher achievement compared to their counterparts in traditional public schools. These students often make greater academic progress compared to those from traditional schools. For example, up to sixty-seven percent of the charter schools in California between 2009 and 2010 were able to reach their students to the achievement targets on the tests presented by the state (Bettinger). It was in comparison with the traditional public schools were only fifty-seven percent of the performance target was reached during the period.

The charter schools also present the best opportunity for disadvantaged students where they will offer quality education for free or at reduced prices (Hoxby, and Jonah). There is often the thought that charter schools will admit students who are the brightest and the most motivated. It would be a justification for the better achievement levels among charter school students in particular by the opponents of these types of schools. However, evidence charter schools are often diverse and both racially and economically (Hoxby, and Jonah). Many of the traditional public schools will have a higher population of white students while their percentage in charter schools would be lower. The charter schools will have a mixture of all races, and each race would have a representation within the school. As the charter schools give the opportunity to the disadvantaged, their good performance is also dependent on the flexibility of the curriculum the schools offer to the students. The schools will provide adequate staffing for the students especially in charter schools where the state of chartering bodies fund the schools well and reward the educators for their work (Hoxby, and Jonah).

The charter schools will be under scrutiny for their achievement and for the funding to be renewed it will be necessary for the school to show that it deserves the funding (Bifulco, and H...