What Is A Charter School?

What Is A Charter School?

Charter Schools are schools of choice: choice to parents, students, teachers, and administrators. Parents and students get to choose to enroll in a school that may offer a unique learning environment, such as a school whose science classes are conducted in the field, or offer alternative learning methodologies, such as a specialization in arts education. Teachers and administrators have more authority to make decisions than most traditional public schools. Basically, these schools are free from many of the regulations that apply to traditional public schools.

Charter schools tend to be small schools, with a median enrollment of 242 students as compared to 539 in traditional public schools. According to the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, the average charter school instructor has 19.8 students in his or her classroom, as compared to an average of 21.3 kids for public school teachers. Charter schools also serve different communities with a wide variety of curricular and instructional practices.