Charter School Vs. District Schools

My son is at a charter school (Villa Montessori) and loves it. We have to pay a 425 dollar "extra curricular' fee that pays the music and spanish teacher's salaries and for art supplies. Apart from that everything is free. I have heard of charter schools that have closed down for lack of funds so I would check out how long Heritage has been in business and its finanacial status and if it is achieveing, performance plus or performing as a school. If you get positive feedback to those questions then I would go for it. I find my school to be a community of very loving teachers and parents.

Well Both are payed for through tax payer dollars. Both schools will be in a testing system typically. Charter schools are started by corporations or individuals (I believe)and are to fill a need and provide a different type of education than public schools, where as district schools are founded by the state. Also everyone that is a teacher in the public school system has to be a certified teacher. Some charter schools accept non certified teachers. This means teachers may not have all of the schooling, or tests qualifying them to be "certified". I know lots of parents who are happy with thier childrens charter school experience, and many who would never send there kids back....it is the parents individual choice.
Here is a link to what the National Education Association has to say about charter schools : www.nea.org/charter/index.html
My own personal belief is a childs education depends on the teachers in the school, administration, and the parents involvement.
Good luck!
K.

My daughter went to a district school for Kindergarten. We were not impressed. She didn't learn one new thing the whole year she was there. It wasn't really the school's fault necessarily - the teacher was just forced to spend most of her time with the kids having the most trouble (of which there were many).
Now she is at a wonderful charter school called Happy Valley Basic School in the NW valley. We love it. The kids are grouped by ability so they can keep the pace up. The class sizes are large but it doesn't seem to affect the students negatively at all. We feel we are getting a private school education for free.
We did look at some other charter schools and a lot of them didn't seem very good. It really requires a lot of research but a good charter school is worth the time spent researching in my opinion.

Hi, You can find out the schools label on the Arizona Department of Education webpage. It will tell you about each specific school and their label by the state, ie. performing, failing etc. Charter schools usually don't offer as many great programs as public schools. I work at a public school in Glendale El.School District and our school has a lot of great programs such at gifted, speech, after school GEO, summer school, reading intervention, art, music, pe, etc. My son goes to a charter school near our house and they have no art and no gifted programs and the school itself looks like they do not have as much money. I like it though because of the small class sizes and because my son has ADHD and needs extra help focusing. I do think that I will change back to public school next year because I think the teachers are more qualified in my area. I also like the free after school programs at the public school. Oh by the way charter schools are schools where one or more people come up with a philosophy for their school and follow that belief, thus the charter.

I am a special education teacher who has worked both in district and charter schools. A district school is state and federal funded and is subject to ALL state and federal laws. This includes teacher certification, having highly qualified teachers and meeting the requirements of adequate yearly progress. District schools tend to be much larger and offer a wider variety of programs. They are unable to refuse enrollment unless it is a student who has been expelled from another district. A charter school is owned privately and can either be a profit or not-for-profit company. Most of them are for profit and are set up as a business to make money. If they do not take any Title 1 funding or special educaiton funding then they are not bound by the requirements of adequate yearly progress, but if they are not a performing school then they usually go out of business. You need to check to make sure that all of their teachers are required to be highly qualified and that all of them are certified. There are good charter schools out there and there are some that are not so good. You can always check with the state charter board to see if the school has complaints or if it has ever had any serious issues. With any school, district or charter, I suggest that you drop in unannounced on more than one occassion to check it out and see what is actually going on. Your other option depending on what you are wanting is to home school your children, there is a large support network here in Arizona. I hope I answered your question.