Charter Schools
Here are the benefits of sending your
child to a NYC charter school
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 fl atten
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 between public, private
and homeschooling, charter schools have
become a viable and attractive option for a
child’s education.
A charter school is an
indepen den tly-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
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 theNew York Department
of Education, public school students grades
PHOTO VIA GETTY IMAGES
3-8 were 47% profi cient in English Language
Arts (ELA) and 46% profi cient in
math in 2019.
PerNYCCharterSchools.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.
10 January 14, 2021 Schneps Media
/PerNYCCharterSchools.org
