So I’ve seen some stuff about charter schools but I’m not from the states and don’t think my country has them (if they do I’m not aware and they aren’t well know).
They seem a little controversial and I’m not getting why (apart from what seems like gentrification. But again don’t know what they are so I might be wrong) so please ELI5
In: 10
eli5: Normally, a town runs the schools in it and uses a big piggy bank to pay for everything the school needs. Every grown-up in the town pays a little bit of money to the bank so all of the kids in the town can go to the school for free. A charter school is a school that gets money from the same piggy bank, but does not listen to the town about how the school should work. Teachers in charter schools may not be allowed to be teachers in a regular school, and the school may focus on different subjects than a regular school or not teach a subject (like science) at all. Many people think that charter schools are a problem because they get money from the town without listening to all of the parents, but some people think that charter schools are a good thing because they give parents a choice for what kind of school they send their kids to; this can seem good to them if the charter school has the same religion or believes the same thing as the parents.
However, for every kid that goes to a charter school, the regular schools in town get less money from the piggy bank. Many regular schools already don’t have enough money, so this can be a real issue for parents who want their kids to go to the regular school. Most teachers think that charter schools are a bad idea because they take the town’s money to teach things that won’t be helpful to the kids when they are grown-ups, if they teach anything at all. Because charter schools are special, they don’t have to follow the same rules regular schools do; for example, regular schools have to provide ramps for kids in wheelchairs so they can get in and out of the school, but charter schools don’t have to do this — this is one of many differences. Sometimes charter schools are run by a “shell company,” which is what happens when businesspeople make a business that takes money from one place and puts it in another place. For a charter school, the money is taken out of the town’s big piggy bank, goes through the shell company, and into the pockets of the businesspeople, who are often the principal and teachers at the charter school. Usually these schools are pretty bad schools, and the principal ends up on the news channel for taking money from the town without teaching the kids. Sadly, most of the time, nothing bad happens to the principal or the teachers for taking the money because they are friends with the people who run the town, like the mayor and the city council — sometimes, they are even friends with the governor of the State! These people make it hard to punish the bad businesspeople because the businesspeople give them money from the shell company to run for re-election, as well as to spend on themselves.
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