What's the big difference between charter schools and free schools? | Education | The G... - 0 views
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charter school free school english education independent school private school education american education usa united kingdom england
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By comparing students in each charter school with similar students attending a local traditional school, researchers measured the impact that attending each institution had.
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The 2013 study shows that the effect of school type is largely negligible when looking across students as a whole. But for poor students, especially poor minority ethnic students, charter schools bestowed substantial learning benefits.
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there is a huge amount of variation across schools and geographical regions. Even if they were, England's policy is not like the American one.
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in New Orleans. Prior to Hurricane Katrina, the city was notorious for its poorly performing schools, but since then, 88 charters have opened and are considered a lead cause of improved student achievement. What the policy's proponents won't tell you, though, is that charter school proposals in New Orleans are decided upon by the local school district, or they are independently evaluated.
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In Florida, another frequently quoted "success" story, local districts have complete control over charter school applications.
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with England, where local authorities are completely cut out of the picture, leading to the opening of free schools in areas with neither enough pupils to fill them nor any land for suitable premises.
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England's lack of transparency on free schools is an embarrassment. Given that the schools are entirely taxpayer funded, the fact that it took a two-year legal battle before the British Humanist Society was granted access to the names and locations of proposed schools is absurd. A second lengthy struggle concluded last month, when the National Union of Teachers finally secured the release of statutory "impact reports" detailing the knock-on effects of opening each free school
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While these releases are welcome, it is a shame they arrived only after legal appeals, and the public still has no way of knowing what the new school founders promised in their applications, whether the mandatory consultations with local people were faithfully represented, or why proposals were accepted or rejected – leaving some people questioning whether all applicants have been treated equally.
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At the hearings, local people are allowed to voice concerns or support for the planned school, obliging the potential founders to listen to the community they will serve
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Any government writing a policy specifically avoiding this step must be doing so because it believes ordinary people could not possibly add anything to its perfect decision-making
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That a government can be open about the application process yet still achieve great schools is perfectly demonstrated by Massachusetts and New York. Both have high-scoring charter schools and both require applicants who wish to start a school to face public hearings as part of the application process
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The impact of charter schools appears to derive from the fact that those that are failing are closed more quickly than failing traditional schools
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in England, there is no consistent process for closing a failing school or transferring its ownership to another group, with some poor performers forced to "restart", whereas others are left alone