In the United States, it is really difficult to compare and contrast when it comes to the quality of public schooling. The number one reason is that public schools vary from state to state. This is because there is no mention of Public School Systems in our constitution; it is up to the state to choose and pick the policies and laws they want to make for the school systems. In many ways this can come in handy, but in others it can create major chaos. In many urban areas, because of the mismanagement of funding, schools do not have enough money to reform even if they wanted to. In Michigan Detroit, the Detroit Public Schools are in a deficit that has grown to $1.7 million. They have not made a payment to the pension system since October of 2014, and it is expected to rise up to $81 million by July 1st. What they have done in some of their schools to fix this is open up charter schools in placement of those public schools to get out of debt. While this may sound like a good solution, it is actually not. Its defeats the purpose of having a public school system to create equal education for all. Because the schools will have private funding, and will not need to go through getting funding from the city or state, the people funding the money as well as school officials will be the ones who make the decisions for the school and they have the right to omit the students and parents all as the community voice.
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Although many states in the country have had pretty bad reputations of bad schooling systems, usually in urban areas, there are some states that have been trying to reform their schooling systems. However, although this may sound like a good thing, this is actually bringing us down more. This is because the solutions that have been presented for these educational problems are again, the solution to privatize school systems, so that there are sufficient funds. One example of this is the state of Los Angeles, California. They have decided that the way to get out of public school debt, as many others, was to turn to charter schools as a type of reform. They have the most number of charter schools as of this moment. Soon we will see this happening everywhere. For example CPS has just announced a proposal for over 30 new “public charter schools.”
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Cps has just announced a proposal for over 30 new “public charter schools.” This will consist of about 12 public alternative school and 20 public charter schools. This may sound like exciting improvement but “only 17% of charter schools actually outperformed other schools, while 83% of them have failed. CPS believes that by going forth with what they plan to do, they are making progress, but what they don't see is that the problem was never in the school’s itself, but rather the way our whole educational system is set up and thought about. Opening new schools based on a charter value is not what this city needs, and neither is opening up more alternative schools, we need to fix the problem and its roots than expect a new school to fix it. While the question of whether or not charter schools are actually helpful and useful is up for debate, the fact is, all children learn differently. The quicker we realize this, the faster we can progress. Yes, I am sure charter schools have had a great outcome that have helped many students succeed, but we have to remember that in circumstances they choose and pick their students. Also Charter schools are always about school’s choice, rather than parent or even student’s choice.