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Here are some benefits of sending
your child to an NYC charter school
Caribbean Life, MAR. 26-APR. 1, 2021 27
Charter Schools
By Joe Pantorno
Throughout the course of the pandemic,
many New York City students
and parents have had to adjust to
online learning while school doors
were shut. Some parents later opted to
send their child back to school buildings,
masked up and ready to learn.
Even though New York was able to
flatten the curve initially, there still
remains the question of what school
will look like for the remainder of 2021
school year as the vaccine becomes
available. However, 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 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 nonprofit organization.
It allows the school to not have
to follow a mandated curriculum, thus
designing their classrooms and lessons
to fit individual students’ 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 flourishing 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 specific 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
schools
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 percent proficient
in English Language Arts (ELA)
and 46 percent proficient in math in
2019.
Per NYCCharterSchools.org, charter
schools in the city provided much higher
proficiency numbers last year.
ELA proficiency rates for students
grades 3-8 were at 57.3 percent while
math proficiency rates were at 63.87
percent.
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 overflowing,
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 hardearned
money to ensure their child gets
a proper education.
/NYCCharterSchools.org
