Charter Schools VS Public Schools?

        I set up the title this way to make it look like a fight, but is there really a fight between charter and public schools? Here is an article saying public schools are doing better than charter schools in Ohio: http://innovationohio.org/2012/10/18/charter-schools-still-outperformed-by-public-schools/ . One striking statistic shows that Ohio’s traditional public schools graduate nearly 90% of their students, on average. Charter Schools graduate barely 30% on average. However, the article goes on to say that
proficiencies are linked almost perfectly with poverty. So, are charter schools just getting worse students? However, one would think that there would be selection bias for charter schools doing better because that means there is parental involvement in the student's life.

         I do not think public school teachers have anything against charter schools, it's more the environment that allows charters to pop up so frequently and the culture surrounding charters. Charters started as supplements to public education, particularly for students and parents who were interested in topics not offered at public schools or for who wanted a different model of education than a traditional public school. However, this has slowly changed into charters being held up as the solution to the failings of the public school system. As charters are held up as doing so much better than public schools, charter school teachers get shined on too.

        Additionally, most charter schools (really hard to generalize) don't really mess with teachers unions and organized labor and push testing as the primary mode of teacher evaluation. As public school teachers are seen as inept and mired in mediocrity, charter school teachers are held up as beacons of creativity for education reform when they are not really different.

        Another side note is that some charters explicitly do not focus on test scores. They don't recognize the standardized tests as a great way to measure learning. They take them, but they don't teach to them, and they don't put much emphasis on the scores. This makes using test scores as the metric of success pretty tricky. Are charter schools really worse, or are they not teaching for tests?