What’s the difference between charter schools and public schools?
If you spend just one day in New York City, you’ll probably see an ad for a charter school somewhere.
Like traditional public schools, charter schools receive government funding, and they’re free for students to attend. But unlike traditional public schools, they’re run by independent boards. These boards decide how to operate their schools, from the curricula to the academic calendar. They have a contract, or a charter, with New York state that lists the requirements they must meet to stay open. It’s meant to offer some oversight into how these schools run.
Throughout new york city, there are now 281 charter schools serving almost 150,000 students in grades k-12. Advocates are trying to get the New York government to allow more to open.
Charter schools typically outperform traditional public schools on standardized tests in English language arts and mathematics. They also provide an alternative for students who are zoned to low-performing public schools and may not be able to afford private or parochial schools.
But the mere concept of charter schools, let alone the idea of opening more, is the epitome of controversy among educators.
For starters, public schools in NYC receive government funding based on the amount of students enrolled. When enrollment is down, public schools have a lot less money to put into school operations. Critics point out that charter schools basically siphon funding from public schools, because each student they enroll is a source of funding that a public school loses.
As a condition of their state agreement, charter schools must admit and accommodate all kinds of students who want to attend, including English language learners, students with learning disabilities, and students eligible for free or reduced-price lunch. If they have more applicants than space, they will often use a random lottery to choose who gets a spot. But critics also point out that charter schools use sneaky tactics to control the kinds of students who stay in their schools and help them achieve the metrics they use as evidence of their effectiveness.
For example, one study at UCLA analyzed suspension rate data from the 2011-2012 school year and found that in 20% of charter schools, students with disabilities were suspended more than their peers without disabilities. Critics cited this as evidence of “counseling out.” However, that data is from a long time ago, and that study was much bigger than New York City—it included more than 5000 charter schools across the United States.
Also, there’s the lack of transparency. Charter schools get to use their own teaching and disciplinary methods as long as they meet the benchmarks of their charter, and some former students and staff claim that these methods can be rather harsh, like the former teacher in this video.
For now, New York’s charter school cap is on tightly, but charter school advocates continue to push past criticisms to try to loosen that cap.
It may not be long before there’s a charter school in your neighborhood, if there isn’t one already.
Lauren hails from Long Island, NY and got her first taste of journalism as a food writer at Washington University in St. Louis. She previously worked as a teacher and now covers education for City Newsroom.
