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Persuasive Charter School

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Recently, there has been an immense amount of debate regarding school choice in the United States. The focus on ‘school choice’ may be viewed as a manner to allow some students from poor neighborhoods to seemingly attain an education of quality. Despite this, I believe that shifting the focus away from truly improving funding mechanisms in the United States public education systems, only further devastates an institution deeply riddled with inequality. Although school choice gives families options in regards to the education of their children, not all of the options are perfect. With the current administration, Betsy DeVos has shifted critical funding supports in the proposed education reformation plan. This does not address systemic issues …show more content…

Despite Budde’s conceptualization of charter schools, his ideas were not widely accepted by the public until the early 1990s (Howard, 2017). The publication of “A Nation at Risk” in 1983, gave his ideas a boost. This publication exposed the reality of the American educational system and gave rise to questions of how children were learning in the United States. With the help of Al Shanker, the idea of charter schools was introduced to legislation, with Minnesota being the first state to build a charter school. Charter schools function in the manner that public schools do because they are publicly funded. Despite this, these schools are still based on choice, as they do not enroll all students based on zoning or district status. Moreover, these schools are privately managed, meaning that they do not have to follow the same laws that public schools do. These schools focus on performance and rely on student performance to continue to run. Despite the fact that some charter schools are doing substantially worse than comparable public schools, “some charter schools - especially those serving kids from disadvantaged backgrounds - are doing substantially better” (Lloyd, 2015). Albeit some schools are underperforming, “there are more outperforming charter schools than underperforming ones” (Lloyd, …show more content…

As a nation, we currently provide foundational education (K-12) to any and all. Despite the fact that public schools have built the educational foundation within the United States, these schools can be riddled with inequalities that target marginalized identities. Due to the prevalence of inequality within public schools, many are fighting for the reformation of these schools. Many public schools do not obtain enough funding from the state or federal level, as a result, these schools rely on funding from the local level, which is detrimental to the development of schools in low-income communities. These classist boundaries create public schools that are overcrowded, underfunded, and required to follow an ineffective uniform model of teaching based on curriculum expectations. According to the United States Department of Education, failing to ensure that districts start with a ‘level playing field’ in terms of federal funding allocated to support student needs, both creates and exacerbates a system of ongoing inequity. According to American Progress, schools with 90 percent or more students of color spend a full $733 less per student per year than schools with 90 percent or more white students (Spatig-Amerikaner, 2012). The system does not distribute opportunity equitably, as much of the public education funding is derived from local property

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