Why should we have charter schools in the first place?
In America, anyone is free to open a new school – establish an educational philosophy, accept students, hire teachers and start teaching them. These new schools are called private schools. When this type of school is founded with a religious mission and focus, we call them parochial schools. One major fact to note here is that this type of school receives no tax funding from the state or local government – all funding must be raised from parents or other sources. Also, this type of school must meet State Education Department standards if they are to award diplomas that the state recognizes as valid.
It is common knowledge that the Republican Party has a primary goal of limiting government wherever possible. However, several years ago, the Party also adopted a new goal – that of creating a system of school choice. The credo was that we could solve all of the problems found in K-12 education if parents were allowed to choose the school that their children attended. After all, we’ve all been to school, so obviously we all know how to run a school better than those who are now doing it.
Somehow, they managed to convince enough people that this idea was valid and so today the government funds many new schools – dreamed up by well-meaning groups of individuals – that promote an educational mission of their choosing – and call them “charter schools.” The Republicans put a damper on their less government goal with the dreams of creating schools with no teacher tenure or teachers unions to deal with or no radical curricular ideas being taught by the liberals getting in the way. To achieve those worthy goals, a little more government would be OK.
Now a group of New Castle County lawmakers is concerned that if more charter schools are approved, it will have a very negative impact on the existing public school districts and will limit their mission and seriously affect the level of quality that they have achieved. This is obvious – with fewer students and less funding, the existing programs will not be able to maintain or improve their current offerings.
Education always has been under a system of local control in which each state establishes the standards and outcomes that the students in that state are expected Why should we have charter schools in the first place?: