National Charter School Study

In the Untied States, parents always worry about the learning achievement of their children because their future will not be only affected on the wealth and happiness of the family, but also impact in the country. Before the year of 1920, the issue of school choice was not a problem for student’s parents to pay attention. But the publicized impression on the United States which was falling behind the world economy was emphasized, and the education system was “at risk” because the ability of American students at that time was lower than the ability of students in some other countries. Therefore, the educators in the U.S tried to inform the educational system by transferring more autonomy to school, and the ideas of establishment of charter schools
Last year, Margaret E. Raymond, et. al., published the report “National Charter School Study 2013,” called CREDO 2013, on academic performance of students between charter schools and traditional public schools (TPS). The survey covered 27 states and District of Colombia, and the observation was conducted on 1,532,506 charter school students with a matched group of students from TPSs. The report concluded that when considering the academic student performance, 25 % of charter school students were estimated to have greater score than comparable TPSs’ students in reading comprehension, and 25% of charter school students were estimated to have greater score than comparable TPSs’ students in Mathematics, whereas, 19% of charter school students were estimated to have lower score than comparable TPSs’ students in reading comprehension, and 31% of charter school students were estimated to have lower score than comparable TPSs’ students in mathematics. Therefore, the report concluded that reading ability of charter school students is better than the TPS’s students, and the skill to solve mathematics is the same between two educational
That gives students’ parents more choices to select the suitable school for their children. Those parents think that the increased competition between public and charter schools would lead to better American educational systems for all students.
Another argument of the supporters of charter school is that because the charter school model has been successful, the U.S government has generously supported charter schools. For instance, in finance year 2000, President Bill Clinton provided 134 million to invest charter school system. Nowadays, President Barrack Obama spent 435 million to improve this system (Knaak). With the governmental special treatment, as the 2015 - 2016 school year begins, charter schools served over 7% of U.S. K-12 students (about 2 million of students) in 42 states.
In short, although charter schools acquire the reflexibility of curriculum and virtual success, many parents want their students to attend this system as shown in “The lottery.” To improve the student’s performance, the government should invest both educational systems to increase the competition among the American education systems. Based on the weak points of the charter school system which are analyzed as above, Knaak concluded