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Public Schools Vs Charter Schools

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My research topic is on the Charter Schools within the Greater Cleveland, OH area. This topic interests me because I am a mother of three school-aged children. If any of my kids attended a failing school I would like to have an alternative to choose from. I have seen some of my friends choose to send their kids to a Charter school. Most of them had great experiences. Some of my friends loved the smaller class sizes and the individualized educational plans. Two of my friends felt that the schools were too strict and they were opposed to the required uniforms. By doing research, we can find out what schooling option is most beneficial for a student attending school in the Cleveland area.
There are two specific research questions that I will …show more content…

In my opinion, the thriving charter schools, like the Breakthrough Charter School system, (Magaw, 2015) needs to have more reports published and distributed within the local communities. If parents saw the positive reports, and attended informational nights, they may see the need to switch their child to a charter school. I think there is still a communication gap in place that could easily be eradicated with proper planning.
To begin the research, we have to take a look at the available comparisons between the Charter schools and the Public schools. This will show us which school choice is most efficient academically overall. This will reveal if sending a child to a Charter school is the better way to go. Additionally, we have to examine what charter schools are doing right and what they are failing to implement. This will reveal what things they still need to put in place to be effective.
Originally, charter schools were designed as an alternative to Public Schools. Parents desired a place they could send their kids to learn that wasn’t failing academically. For instance, the Cleveland Metropolitan School District has been failing for many years. The “CMSD has a graduation rate of just 54 percent, and last year, two-thirds of its schools received a D or F on the state report card” (Chilcote, …show more content…

Charter schools have faced some local opposition from the public school system. “School districts and teachers unions have opposed charter schools, arguing that they hurt district schools by siphoning off motivated, high-achieving students” (Chilcote, 2011). While some view the new school option as a tool in educational reform, others see it as divisive.
According to Timothy Magaw, the acceptance of charter schools has been mixed. He notes that the effort to bring in charter schools was headed by Mayor Frank Jackson as an attempt to correct a failing school system. By uniting charter schools with public schools, there are also extra levy dollars to be gained. The collaboration was put in place “to hopefully, massage those mid-performing facilities into high-performing schools. Opportunities for collaboration might include, for instance, shared enrollment systems or joint professional development for faculty” (Magaw,

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