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I've worked in 2 public school districts in different states, and both had some charter school competition and it's an interesting thing.

In Texas, I worked in a fairly low income district and we had all the issues that came with low income neighborhoods. Higher rates of crime, teen pregnancy, drugs, absent parents, parents in jail, parents who were adult entertainers, domestic abuse, sexual abuse--you name it. But the teachers and admin--were by and alrge just AMAZING. I really mean that. I've worked in 4 schools in my 15 year career and some of the best teachers I have ever met were at those very hard schools.

There were 2 main charter schools in town and 1 was terrible, with way worse scores than the public schools. I honestly can't imagine why any parent would send their children there. We would have students transfer back into the public schools and the horror stories they told were astounding.

The other charter school is a super well known national chain of charter schools and their scores were amazing. But the thing is, they were basically an elite private school using public money. There was a super difficult application process and they only took the very best of the best. They would kick out students left and right if they were failing, if they had any behavior problems, etc. SO how can a public school compete with that? We HAVE to take every single child who lives in the district, whether they are wheelchair bound and non verbal and need diapering, or they have already been in jail and have an ankle monitor, or whether they were just found after being trafficked by their own parents (yes, I had students in all of those situations).

The whole point of public education is to ensure EVERY american child receives and education, so our country has an educated workforce and continue to compete globally with other countries. An educated citizenry benefits all of us. So these charter schools who get to cherry pick and lemon drop (choose the best and drop any problem kids) are hurting all of us when they are using public monies.

Now, in my current town.....it's a bit different. There is a semi contentious situation between the 3 local charters and the public school. The local charters also used to do the cherry pick/lemon drop dance, and therefore their scores were better than the local school and parents bought into the idea that the charter schools were "better", because unfortunately, parents are pretty uneducated about public education in general. And obviously, a large percentage of our country is more interested in what's best for their own kids rather than what's best for the population at large. And as a mom, I totally get that but as a public educator, boy does that piss me off. LOL.

Anyway, through public pressure, our public charters started a lottery and the just recently they started a weighted lottery, where low income students get double the chances in a lottery. Now, it's still a lottery based on just whoever applies (usually the more motivated, more educated parents), so it become a chicken-or-egg scenario in terms of success. Are students in these charters marginally "more successful" on state tests because they are already part of a subpopulation of motivated families who go through the application process? Is it because of the school structure? Is it because most charter schools do not take severely disabled students? Most likely the first and third have more weight on the final scores.

And finally--in my local town, 1 charter school is actually selling something I as a parent really really really believe in that my local school district does not offer: Bilingual immersion education. My local school district should offer than program--that's the one thing that a charter school is offering that my public school isn't--and they need to get on board with that.

last thing: I live in a town that is in flux---it's gentrified rapidly over the past 15 years and it's currently going from "bad schools" to what I believe will soon be "very good schools". And there is 100% an undercurrent running through every playground discussion of the public schools when all the more recent upper-middle class and downright rich parents discuss amoungst themselves (okay, ourselves): Should we let "OUR KIDS" go to school with "THOSE KIDS".

That is the ugly side of it. Should my kid, with two banker parents (this isn't me, this is a lot of people in my town), be in a school with all those brown kids from the public housing? There's a combination of ignorance, privilege, and downright racism that I sometimes see.

I don't know how to tell my friends in my town--look, I work in a school with 0% (0%) low income kids. 0. But the teachers and the programs are not perfect where I work. We have some really amazing teachers and we have some duds, just like any workplace in America. The big different is our kids' home lives. And income level. SO basically, moving to a "better" school district is not really insuring better teachers or better education--you are essentially just ensuring that your kids are only in school with other kids exactly like them, with high achieving, involved, well off parents.

@Anagram: i don't have the teaching background, but you articulated everything I would have written if i did about our local education options. And the bilingual aspect is HUGE and something our public system is really missing out on. That, for me, is the sole reason I'd opt for a charter, even though my chances of getting in are slim to none.
And your second post, yes agree to this too, 100%. It is thinly veiled racism in a town whose middle and upper middle class residents claim to "want their kids at diverse schools", but really, they want diversity only within their own SES.

I think the important distinction that's missing in the conversation about charter schools is profit vs non-profit.

The for profit charters are the ones (at least in my state) where they are targeting specific segments of the population, floating school choice and required parental involvement and superior test scores. These are the ones that I would not consider for my son, no matter what the program was that they offered.

@LemonJack: Interestingly, in my town's district, a bilingual elementary program is offered in the public schools, but parents aren't bending over backwards to apply. The bank street model school is the one they are all wanting to attend.

The other one I think that more people should learn about is the International Baccalaureate PYP/MYP/DP.

Our public schools are some of the best in the state. This is why we chose this expensive nova county over cheaper areas. Schools are very important to us. We both went to great public schools. That being said, our county also has a non-profit charter school that is STEAM. Our pediatrician has warned us to really keep LO engaged and challenged because she’s otherwise going to stay in constant trouble bored in school. That happened to both DH and I even though I did all AP and he did year round sports. we are hoping the charter school will provide her more challenge and like the STEAM aspect and that it includes the Arts (my undergrad degree is English literature).

My kid goes to a Montessori charter school. We chose it over our local neighborhood school for a few reasons:
1. Montessori method and all that entails (focus on the whole child, mixed-age classrooms, focus on fine motor skills, more control over what they "work on"), which our neighborhood school doesn't offer (at the info session, the principal told a story of a kid who was interested in chemistry, so she researched a professor at the local university, emailed and asked if she could visit, found a chaperone from the approved list, found the bus route that would take her there, and arranged her own field trip to meet the professor at her office - granted that's probably not the norm but I love that the school can foster that kind of independence and curiosity)
2. I've heard stories of the neighborhood school requiring silence in the cafeteria and halls which seems kind of sad to me. I worry that my kid would be labeled with behavioral problems/ADHD for not being able to sit still and do worksheets
3. A neighbor who works in public schools also sends her kid to our charter school which made me feel better
4. It has socioeconomic and racial diversity (though so does our neighborhood school)

Our charter school is far from perfect (lots of teacher turnover, low standardized test scores) but we're generally happy and our son loves school which is the most important thing. We may switch to our local public school in a few years - I do like the idea of more neighborhood friends and I am a product of and proponent of public school.

@annem1990: 100% agree. In Chicago and many other cities, charters are seen by parents as this magical alternative to neighborhood schools. In reality they often have similar or worse achievement, even while self-selecting for students with fewer behavioral or learning issues. Plus the issue of financial transparency is a huge problem for me. Charters receive state funding but aren't required to be financially transparent like typical public schools.
@Mrs Green Grass: I agree and like the idea of charters being a place where more experimentation can take place. I think that was one of the main principles when charters began to form. However, although experimentation and new ideas may be more accepted in some charters, many go into low income areas as an alternative to the neighborhood school without evidence that they are providing a better education.
Also, in my area where public schools are good, there was recent talk about charter schools wanting to come in. Many parents worried about these schools taking resources from already good neighborhood schools. This, to me, feels like charters wanting to make a profit and capitalize on already strong students.
Okay, I keep adding to this response because apparently I feel really strongly about it. One other issue is that many local governments (like Chicago) who struggle with dealing with the teachers union have strongly courted charter schools as a way to weaken the union. The Chicago Reader (which has an admitted very liberal bent) did a long set of articles a number of years ago about many of these issues. Here's one link: https://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/a-primer-on-charter-schools/Content?oid=4292449

@ElbieKay: Just curious, did you check achievement levels and test results to compare the charter schools to your neighborhood school either before deciding to apply or more recently? Either for the younger grades or high school? Was there something about the schools that attracted you aside from test scores?

We live in a moderate-sized city in north central Florida. We have public school choice state-wide. My husband and I chose to send our daughter to a charter school when we did not get into and of our four public schools of choice.

While we LOVE our neighborhood we do not love the districted elementary school. We have a few friends who are in graduate teaching programs and who work at the various schools in town - when talking about our options with them they expressed that our districted school had wonderful instructors and a great volunteer base. However due to the primary needs of the student population most of the extra resources are geared towards ESOL, tutoring, and other types of programs that my child personally does not benefit from.

We struggled a lot with our decision. I mean it feels selfish to say that because my child won't use the resources at a school we don't want to attend, but that's what it boiled down to (among the other factors).

I wanted my child to have a much lower student-teacher ratio (2:13 vs. 1:25) and to have access to programs that would benefit her personally. The school we chose also has a multi-age classroom (K-2) where my daughter can be with her peers most of the time but participate with older children in areas where she is excelling.

Oh! A separate factor was also that our school district did some re-working and instead of every elementary going from K-5 they made one campus entirely for Pre-K and K students with surrounding schools 1-5. That would have put my kid at three different schools within her first three years of school since were already at our charter school for VPK (she got off the waiting list there first). Both my husband and I considered that too much change for LO's personality.

@Chuckles: The charter we are sending our daughter to had to hold a lottery and also produces an annual report with a full set of financials. We are in MN.

@Mrs. Lemon-Lime: I think magnet is different from charter.

@ElbieKay: Yes, the demographics for the older grades are totally different from the demographics of the younger grades. Our particular town has 2 main issues that contribute to the flow of families out to the suburbs (housing prices AND school scores). So housing prices won't be solved by good schools. However, I think more people will be content in small spaces with families (like Manhattan or Park Slope) when our schools scores are better; however, if people keep moving out the schools will never be "better" because it's purely a demographics issue. Simply put, if all the families that are currently in pre-k stayed, our scores would already be Park Slope level scores.

So it's going to take some marketing on the part of the public schools (which they are doing), plus a little foresight on the part of parents (you could say a leap of faith, but if you check out the statistical trends, it's almost a sure thing) to convince people to stay, and the scores will change automatically as the demographics change. It really is that simple, unfortunately. Good teaching in schools and innovative programs have less impact on school scores than people realize--it really all comes down to education and income level of the parents who stay and keep their kids in public schools.

In our local High school, last year there were only 412 students in the entire high school (that's only slightly more than half of what was in Pre-k3). And out of those 412 students, 310 were low income. That's 75% of the students. That puts our HS in a demographic group similar to Paterson and Camden.

Whereas one of our buildings that only has pre-k and a few lower elementary grades was 11% low income across all grades (27 out of 242 kiddos). So there's a huge demographic shift between the lower grades and the upper grades, and it's not really a matter of the schools "improving" before our kids are old enough to go to MS and HS, it's more a matter of convincing ourselves to stay and helping to make that demographic shift ourselves.

I think these issues go hand in hand with the charter school issue. I know Charter schools have to have the same standardized tests as public schools, and my preliminary googling tells me in NJ (my state) charter schools are supposed to follow the same standards/requirements public schools have to--except they are allowed to apply for waivers to try new concepts and in our previous Republican administration, it seems waivers were pretty easy to come by.

So to the OP, maybe the fact that Charter schools can easily get around restrictions places on public schools is a contributing factor. Similarly, that they can use staffing $$ in different ways, because they don't have to take severely disabled students (who often require a full time teacher, a full time aide, and special class and bathroom facilities to allow for diapering and feeding). For me, it's an issue that causes me internal conflict--I want the best for my own kids for sure!--but I don't want it to come at the expense of the poor and disabled kiddos that don't get into charter schools, either. At the same time, very few people want to run social experiments on their own kids--my husband included. So no matter what statistics I throw at him, he's the typical non-educator parent that just sees test scores and wants our kids to be in a school with "the best" test scores, and he doesn't really want to know about why the scores are what they are.

@DesertDreams88: It's a real-life issue for me, since I have two kids in our public schools. So my research is more for my own info than anything else. I'm so obsessed with this stuff, last year I pulled all the 3rd grade scores (the first year they test in our state) from our local school and pulled all the scores of the 6 best suburban schools around us and made a giant spreadsheet so I could show my husband that there's actually not a big difference at all. We are only 4-6 points behind the best schools in our area (and arguably the state) in our 3rd grade Math and ELA scores, even though most of those schools have 0-1% low income and we are more around 10-23% low income in our elementary.

Just for my own information, I looked up my 3 local charter school's stats:

They all have slightly better scores than the public schools, but it's actually not that disparate (I only looked at 3rd and 4th grade because of the demographic changes I mentioned earlier). BUT the % of kids on free or reduced lunch is pretty disparate.

Our bilingual charter school has only 8% low income students across all grades. A charter school in town that goes through grade 8 and has a more progressive curriculum, and they have a 9.5 % low income population. The only charter school in town that goes through grade 12 has a 14% low income pop. While our public high school is 75% low income. That's a huge, huge, huge difference in demographics. So of course their scores are better. Unfortunately, it leads the general public into believing our public school is "bad", so they move away or go private, which perpetuates the cycle. It's very interesting.

@Anagram: you wrote this:

At the same time, very few people want to run social experiments on their own kids--

and it really resonated because that's me as well. My state is rated #3 in education in the US, but my particular town is more diverse and has the usual lower test scores that accompany it. When it came time for my son to enter Kindergarten, I was torn because I do understand that by us choosing the neighborhood school, it would mean that the school would benefit from my resources (time, involvement) but I didn't want my son to have to go to school in a building that was 60 years old because no one can get their act together to build a new school in town! So we ended up at a magnet school in a neighboring town where they are building a brand new building and they have a program that we are very interested in. My town is still debating the location of the new school (it is amazing to me that people don't want a school on their street ) and I just don't have the time to wait. I feel like I am contributing to the problem, but I do not feel like it is right for me to sacrifice the education of my son. He doesn't get a second chance.

We don't have charter schools in our state outside of the 2 largest cities (3 hours in opposite directions of where I live). We do have a magnet school where I live. The waiting list for fall 2020 K is already a thing (my son will be 2021 K).

This magnet school is a STEM focused school, it is just down the road from us (maybe 3/4 of a mile), where as the district elementary is diagonal to our house. My husband and I made a pros and cons of if we want to go on the waiting list next year or not.

At the end, we decided that we are lucky to have found an affordable house in the top elementary of 35 elementary schools in our district. The class sizes might be a little large (24:1 with an aid sometimes), but I LOVE LOVE LOVE that your kid gets the same teacher for K & 1st Grade, so she will already know my son's learning style, strengths, weaknesses, personality. We decided not to take a spot in the magnet school, because some kid from the north side of town that might have got stuck in a loop so to speak if they didn't get a chance at the magnet school because we thumbed our noses at a great district school, just to get the opportunity of a STEM school.

We have the time and resources to foster his interest in STEM through extracurricular activities if he is interested in them at all.

@ElbieKay: we applied to the dual language school and the one close to our house but not the third—just to have options. And space on or town is the thing you can’t fix. Especially with 3 kiddos. It takes a lot of $$$$ to have bedrooms and outdoor space.