Charter Schools and Education Reform

On 9/29/2010 education secretary, Arne Duncan, announced a $50 million grant to twelve high performing charter schools. In the midst of a hotly debated, media-popular time in education, this announcement is one of many examples of the Obama administration’s positive outlook on charter schools (not very different from Republicans and the Bush Administration). The benefits of charter schools are highly contested. One side argues that charter schools take funding away from traditional public schools without doing much to advance education. The other points to the number of high-performing charter schools that have given many students in low-income areas with inadequate public school systems an opportunity to receive a quality education. A concise summary of some important aspects of the debate are outlined in Newsweek’s article “Understanding Charter Schools”.

High quality charter schools are a testament to the progress that non-governmental organizations can make in education reform. Although charter schools are public, they are created by outside parties who, in many cases, usually know what they are doing when it comes to improving schools. For example, KIPP (Knowledge is Power Program), an extremely successful charter school program: “While less than one in five low-income students attends college nationally, KIPP's college matriculation rate stands at more than 85 percent for students who complete the eighth grade at KIPP”(www.kipp.org), was started by two experienced teachers. This suggests that perhaps a Pluralist democratic system would be best for education reform. People who have worked in schools, who know the complexities of the classroom, and the sensitivity of the subject, should be the ones making the policy decisions with students’ best interest in mind.