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Saturday, February 26, 2022

Charter Schools and Voucher Programs

 Charter Schools have been around for many years but just in the past few decades have really become a topic of conversation with their connection to voucher programs as a possible solution to educational inequities. Charter schools are privately run schools that receive funding from the public, meaning that while they receive similar funding to public schools, they are not run by any school district and do not follow the same curriculum, standards, etc.. Charter schools began popping up in the 1980s but did not become popular in the United States until the mid-2000s after receiving endorsements from President George Bush under the No Child Left Behind program. The idea behind charter schools was to give parents more choice in their student's education as the curriculum is often more tailored to the students, teachers are given much more freedom in their educational decisions, and parents do not have to worry about being in a specific school zone to attend. School Vouchers go hand in hand with this idea of offering parents more choice in their children's education and are typically implemented together with charter schools in areas that adopt the system. The goal of these programs overall is to 

A teacher assists  elementary students with
coding app on their computers at a charter
school in California
Voucher programs work by taking the money that each school is allotted per child from funding from property taxes and rather than giving this money directly to the school, it gives that money to parents in the form of vouchers which they are able to take to any educational institution of their choice (public, private, charter, Montessori, etc). The thought behind this system is that if parents do not think that their child is receiving a quality education at the public school they are at, they should be able to send their kids to a school that is able to provide an adequate education. By this process, inadequate schools will simply have students leave and will shut down while high-performing schools will receive more funding and thrive as more students chose them.

While on the surface, this system seems like it would be beneficial in holding schools accountable and making sure that everyone has access to a good education, there are many factors that make this system heavily biased and many examples of how these biases have made these systems a failure time and time again. Some of these issues are outlined below.

  • Not all students have access to educational institutions due to a lack of transportation
    • This system benefits families who have access to reliable transportation
  • Vouchers may not cover the cost of charter schools or private schools near the student
    • This system benefits families who are able to afford to cover the remaining costs
  • Charter schools have the ability to implement selective admission processes meaning that they can choose which students to admit while public schools are forced to accept all students
    • Lower performing students and minority students are often highly underrepresented in Charter schools
Because of these inequities, students who have access and means to use the voucher system are able to move their kids into better schools while those who are not, are forced to stay in the school which now has a lack of funding from the voucher students leaving which furthers the deficit in the school, creating a worse educational situation for the students left behind who are not able to leave. While I think that the idea of charter schools is fantastic because I believe that teachers should have a lot more say in the education that they provide, I don't think that this system is fair and it does not improve public education which should be a goal of the US government rather than simply promoting charter schools which have less regulation and have not been proven to increase test scores or student achievement over public schools. Countries like Chile and Sweeden have adopted a fully charter school program with vouchers and both countries have seen remarkable increases in the disparity between classes as well as lowered PISA scores. Chile has taken steps to reverse this damage and make the voucher system more equitable for its residents (recognizing that it costs more money to educate students from lower socioeconomic status and changing the voucher amounts accordingly) but it serves as a powerful lesson that this system must be carefully considered from all angles before it is widely adopted in any situation.

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