Public Education

The topic that I am going to be talking about in this essay is a very big and controversial issue. That is rather it is a good idea or bad to charter our failing public school system. So far it seems the non-chartering path is in the lead, but charting school is catching up fast. In this essay I'm going to summarize one article title The New School, by Chester E. Finn Jr. that supports the charter system. Also I will summarize an article title To Market, To Market, by Phyllis Vine who seem to strongly opposed the charting our public system. As far as my personal opinion goes, I believe charter schools are still in it's infancy, we should give it more time to develop before we can actually decide rather charter school is a good idea or not. I would go into greater detail later in the essay.

The Pro-charter article titled The New School, by Chester E. Finn Jr. who is the former assistant secretary of education believed and I quote "charter schools offer the benefits of both public and private schools and can revitalize urban education." He started the article by stating that currently the charter systems enrolling about 170,000 students, with about twenty-nine school authorizing and allowing charter schools to be built and operated, states such as California, Michigan, Texas, Massachusetts. What is a charter school? Well, according to the article, it is "a public school with some of the most highly prized features of private schools." The best part is it is offered to anyone who wishes to attend, with no additional cost to the parents, because it is pay for by the tax dollars. Out of all the charter school, many are owned and operated by local community and parents. But there are about two dozen that are operated and owned by the Edison Project and the Educational Alternatives Inc. For some other firms instead of operating and owning the entire school, they target specific area, such as the furnishing, tutoring, and technology to name a few. According to this article the educational system in the United States is $300 billion enterprise. While Chester states maybe a reason for some firms to try to jump on board the chartering business. From Chester's article he stated that in two years time he visited about sixty schools in fourteen states and interviewed few hundreds of those either worked or attended those schools. The results are, a few schools that if you had a choice you would never send your kids there. And one or two that didn't seem to be running quite well. Comparing to the amount of them that are running efficiently and actually making improve in the students grade, are like saying that all apples on an apple tree are Superb apples, with not a single one rotten. From Chester's point of view there are two paths that the charter system can follow. First path to sum it up, people will realize charter schools are a success, and thousands more will developed. The second path people realizing that charter school is a failure, and teachers unions and their allies will try to limit and even eliminate this system. All in all, Chester feels that although charter schools are not a cure-all for American education, but in his surveys of the past two years showed him that charter schools are a promising education-reform strategy.

The second article titled To Market, To MarketÐ'... by Phyllis Vine, who is a journalist and historian maintains that charter schools are just another way for entrepreneurial ventures who will eventually sells the childrens short. According to Vine the educational