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Charter Schools in the United States

Charter Schools in the United States took prevalence after Minnesota passed its Charter School Law in 1991 and California following suit in 1992 passing their own law. The laws gave full administrative privileges' to a board of directors, composed of the licensed teachers that work for the school.. Soon after the whole country followed, leading to one of the largest attempts at educational reform in United States history. By giving the administrators of the schools full permission as to how the schools are ran, the new charter schools had substantially more freedom as to how the school was ran, as long as a few basic elements exist: the school must be open to all children, may not charge tuition fees, and they must participate in the same state and federal testing programs as public schools. With these guidelines in mind, the board of directors for each charter school get together and draw a "Charter" which lays the foundation of how the school will be funded and operated, as well as the mission statement of the school. Charter schools sign charter contracts, usually with the district it exists in, and is renewed on a five year basis.

Although the idea of charters was to improve accountability of the results of public education, charters have been criticized for their negative affects on public schools, such as diverting money from public schools in the same district. Charter schools often compete with public schools for public funding as a direct effect of parents actually enrolling their children into charter schools instead of traditional public schools. This disparity occurs because charter schools are funded per student, so as charters acquire more students less funding is available for traditional public schools. Due to these disparate impacts, some have called for federal funding for charter expansion to be withheld until better guidelines have been established that ensure the funds protect public interest and advance the systemwide goals they are intended to address.. Another criticism of charter schools is a process called 'skimming' that occurs in some districts. Skimming occurs when charters attract and exclusively enroll higher performing students, while disabled and other disadvantaged groups are often excluded. Charters have been a hot political topic due to these criticisms and caught more national attention when Betsy DeVos the Secretary of Education under the Trump administration pushed and encouraged the expansion of charter schools. A particular criticism being her revision to the Borrower Defense to Repayment under the Federal Student Aid, she wrote a revision to the defense that required the proof the questioned school had intent to mislead the plaintiff. The revision was extreme enough to cause bipartisan block from Congress from which Donald Trump used a veto to pass.