Compare And Contrast Charter School And Public Education

School choice versus public education is a topic that a lot of people have really strong opinions about. I don’t think there is one right or wrong answer of how the education system should be run, but I do think that it is a topic that people should approach with an open mind. As somebody who grew up attending a charter school, kindergarten through 12th grade, I personally advocate for school choice, because I strongly believe that parents and students should be able to decide what kind of school to attend, but by no means does that mean I am against regular public education. It’s important to recognize that charter schools, magnet schools, and private schools aren’t for everybody; some students just don’t need an alternative schooling program.
Charter schools are a huge component of school choice and often one of the first topics that is at the forefront of the debate. A misconception is that charter schools aren’t public schools, but they are; due to population caps, they use alternate ways of letting students into the school, such as a lottery. The reason the charter school movement started was to find new, successful ways of educating students, to implement those methods on a small scale, and to eventually transition those methods to the larger scale of the regular public education system. Experimentation in education always runs the risk of failure, just like one runs the risk of failing when experimenting with a recipe or a science project. But, the risk of failure often pushes people to find success, even when the odds are against them. The regular public education system may have a lot of imperfections, but it literally cannot fail. The public education system just is; it exists no matter how it is run. Charter schools have to work hard to exist. This kind of risk pushes teachers to teach to a certain level of student mastery and to produce results that prove success, whether in test scores or overall competency. If a charter school works hard to meet standards, or go above simply meeting a standard by experimenting with new learning methods, then are those methods not worth trying on a larger scale in a regular public school? Implementing new learning methods in regular public schools doesn’t necessarily mean they have to emulate every aspect of how a successful charter school is run. Schools just need to try what works. If it doesn’t work, try something else. The only way to get a successful, well-oiled machine is to try, and try again until a successful solution is