Charter Schools: Impact on the Affluent Students Vs. Non-Affluent Students

In many communities across the United States, parents are making the challenging decisions to place their children in private schools. Believing the public school system does not offer enough discipline and structure to the academic setting, these parents find the use of private schools meets the needs and expectations of their child.

In response to this growing concern, many public school districts are developing charter schools which provide a more advanced educational curriculum, meeting the needs of public school offerings with a more advanced and disciplined structure without the financial burden imposed by private school settings.

If you live in a community where charter schools are an option for your child's education, it is important to consider the issues that led to the development of the school and how these issues have been resolved with the charter school's presence. For some school districts, the charter school may have been developed to encourage a greater desegregation of the student body. Often, in communities with highly volatile public school settings, there is a tendency for segregation of the student body to occur. In more affluent families, students may transfer to private schools. If the charter school was developed in your community as a way in which to encourage desegregation, you may want to look at the demographics of the student body. Has there really been a change in the demographic of the general student population.

Often, in school districts where segregation of students has occurred, with more affluent students attending private school, it is rare that these students transfer back into a charter school. Instead, what you may find is the transfer of less affluent students from the public school setting into the charter school setting. If these factors are of concern to you, they are important to consider in your child's academic path.