The Changing State of the Education System Essay

The Changing State of the Education System - Essay Example An option which has been forward is the idea of having charter schools as a way for parents who may not be happy with the present public school system that their child, or children, is in at the present time. "Charter Schools are sponsor-created and -administered, outcome-based public schools that operate under a contract between the school and the local school board or the state. To establish a Charter School, certified (in Ohio's case, certificated) teachers and/or other individuals or organizations, such as colleges, cultural institutions, government bodies, or parents, draw up plans for an innovative, outcome-based** school. (Minnesota's 1993 charter legislation allows for sponsors other than teachers.)," (Sautter p.1). A common complaint for many supporters of the public school system is that, to support charter schools, would drain necessary operating funds from an already fiscally strapped school system. Some interesting statistics for charter schools comes from the website fo r the National Study of Charter Schools: Characteristics of Charter Schools. Those statistics are; (1) Charter schools enroll about 0.5 percent of public school students in the charter states. (2) Most charter schools are small, particularly compared to other public schools. Charter schools have an estimated median enrollment of about 150 students, whereas other public schools in the charter states have a median of about 500 students. More than 60 percent of charter schools enroll fewer than 200 students, whereas about 16 percent of other public schools have fewer than 200 students. Charter schools begun in the 1995-96 and 1996-97 school years have a higher proportion of small schools, those fewer than 100 students than schools opened in earlier years. (3) Many charter schools have nontraditional grade configurations. Charter schools include a higher proportion of K-12, K-8, and ungraded schools than other public schools. (4) Most charter schools are newly created schools. An estima ted 62 percent of charter schools were created because of the charter opportunity; the remainder are pre-existing public schools (25 percent) or pre-existing private schools (13 percent) that have converted to charter status. (5) Newly created charter schools tend to be smaller than converted schools. The median school size for newly created schools is 116 students, compared to a median of more than 380 students for pre-existing public schools. (National Study of Charter Schools 1). While the argument for charter schools has always been that they are better capable to educate the youth of today for the challenges of tomorrow, it is important to mention that charter schools are not above the same failures which plague their public counterparts. In a New York Times article dated 8 November 2007, author Sam Dillon details the campaign by Ohio officials to overhaul their charter school system because, surprise, it too is plagued by issues of poor performance. To sum it up, Ohio Governor Ted Strickland is quoted as saying that, "Perhaps somewhere, charter schools have been implemented in a defensible manner, where they have provided quality," he said. "But the way they've been implemented in Ohio has been shameful.