education
BY BRONX TIMES
Families around New York
City might be faced with the
realization that their children
may not be heading back to
school for the remainder of the
2019-20 scholastic year due to
the coronavirus pandemic.
While online lesson-planning
has provided a consolation
of sorts for students to
fi nish out this year, it isn’t too
early for parents to plan ahead
for next year and beyond when
school doors re-open.
The school choice movement
has provided parents in
New York City and across the
United States with more options
on where to send their
children.
While the only legitimate
options in the past were between
public, private and homeschooling,
charter schools
have become a viable and attractive
option for a child’s education.
A charter school is an independently
operated public
school that usually operates
under a contract with a government
agency or non-profi t organization.
It allows the school to
not have to follow a mandated
curriculum, thus designing
their classrooms and lessons
to fi t the individual student’s
needs.
While the idea of charter
schools has been met with
plenty of criticism, there are
overarching advantages of
sending your child to such an
institution:
Adapting to challenges
Within today’s educational
landscape lies the growing
challenge of properly informing,
preparing, and developing
students who learn and grow
under different circumstances.
There are four ways children
can properly learn and
retain the material of their
coursework: visual, auditory,
reading/writing, and kinesthetic.
Charter schools can provide
a perfect match.
If your child is struggling
with learning disabilities that
withhold them from fl ourishing
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BRONX TIMES REPORTER, F 38 EB. 19-25, 2021 BTR
at public or private schools,
there are charter-school options.
If your child is advanced and
is not being challenged enough
in most group settings, there
are charter-school options.
Specialization with no
tuition
Charter schools provide the
best of both schooling worlds.
While they are independent,
they still must have licensed
teachers, students must
take state-mandated tests, and
underperforming institutions
can be closed — much like most
public and private schools.
But the ability to tweak the
curriculum and offer specifi c
courses that set it apart from
public schooling.
The best part? Parents
won’t have to pay tuition as
they would in private school.
Charters are funded on tax
dollars.
They outperform public
school
Looking at the data, New
York City charter schools are
putting up better numbers
than public schools.
According to the New York
Department of Education, public
school students grades 3-8
were 47% profi cient in English
Language Arts (ELA) and 46%
profi cient in math in 2019.
Per NYCCharterSchools.
org, charter schools in the city
provided much higher profi -
ciency numbers last year.
ELA profi ciency rates for
students grades 3-8 were at
57.3% while math profi ciency
rates were at 63.87%.
Those numbers result in
more learning gains, allowing
students to learn more material
in the same amount of
time as public-school curriculum
allows.
Charter schools have
plenty of support
Parents’ schedules are already
packed as it is. Their
wallets might not be overfl owing,
either. The last thing they
need to do is participate in
fundraisers to get their public
school some extra money.
Charter schools don’t have
that problem as they are privately
funded more often than
not, meaning parents won’t
have to donate more of their
hard-earned money to ensure
their child gets a proper education.
What are the benefi ts of sending
your child to a NYC charter school?
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