Academic Achievement

Ambiguous Differences

Despite the popular claims that charter schools are either the best or the worst, the truth is that they're just like public schools. Charter schools perform on par with public schools and display a wide outcome of possibilities. If you're a parent trying to decide between a charter school and a public one, it would make more sense to decide based on individual performance rather than just the management style of the school. Some charters don't even have college-minded curriculums that focus on high test performance. A school being a charter doesn't have any inherent effect on its academic performance. If a school is mismanaged no matter what management style it has, it will fail, public or private.

Possible "Rigging?"

There are claims that charter schools boost their performance by enforcing harsh standards to filter out bad students. Some charters try to enforce high standards upon students which their public counterparts wouldn't implement; requirements like a longer school year and parental participation. Theoretically, students are systematically cherry-picked and the bad ones will either not enroll or will drop out before completing their school years. While it is true that some charters implement high standards, many of them operate in very low-income urban areas that wouldn't naturally produce high-performance students to just easily pluck from. Also, this claim simply can't be applied to all charter schools. Some charters don't even focus on high-grade performance and would rather focus on progressive education. It is possible that cherry-picking is taking place, but it's hard to prove and there needs to be more research on the matter.