Charter Schools and Parent Involvement

While watching The Lottery in class on Wednesday, all I kept thinking was this is a business.  Charter schools are businesses.  The products they produce are children who are achieving at or beyond their grade level.  What makes these schools so different from public schools?

It seems that there is more cooperation between the staff and the parents in charter schools.  The parents truly want their children to be at the school. They want their children to learn and achieve and they are willing to work with school in order to obtain that outcome.  Not all students are let into the school, only so many are selected to attend.  My opinion is that this selection process psychologically makes the charter school look even more desirable to the parents. The students who are accepted into the charter school will feel special because they were chosen while others were not.  The message that the charter schools are sending is that it is a privilege to attend their school.  That message is what many public schools lack.

With the thought of being privileged to attend the school, the parents will be more willing to work with the school and insure their child continues to be educated by the ‘special school’.  Since the parents are more willing to work with the school, the staff would therefore be more respected.  Parents now see teachers as teammates. I’ll go ahead and assume that charter school parents are, in some way, actively involved with their child’s education.

What about public school parents? 

Yes, there are public school parents who are actively involved with their child’s education.  There are parents who use the teachers/staff as resources to better educate their children and therefore have open communication in regards to their child.  However, there are also parents who aren’t as active in their child’s education.  Of course these parents will not be found in a charter schools because the charter school encompasses family involvement (meetings, wake up calls, etc).   

I think it’s safe to say that almost all parents in charter schools are cooperating with the school, whereas this is not the case in public schools.  That definitely makes a difference in the education of the students. So I don’t think it should be overlooked.

I found this this article which discusses hype vs evidence in charter schools. They discuss the lottery and say that not every charter school uses this system.  The article also states that studies are likely “comparing better-than-average charter schools to wore-than-average public schools.”  I think there are a lot of factors that go into the charter school vs public school debate.  Maybe there is no "right or wrong".  Maybe it's whatever your preference is.