The Magna Charter: Are Charter Schools a Successful Alternative to Public Schooling?

The charter school movement has skyrocketed in recent years.

In large part because stories of positive educational outcomes have emerged, but it’s also proving to be a better return on investment for state and local governments.

In some charter schools, students are getting higher test scores, graduating at higher rates, and earning more lifetime dollars on average.

Even folks like Michael Bloomberg and Diddy have fully endorsed this relatively new method of educating children as an effort to fix our broken education system.

Truthfully, though, there is some legitimate skepticism about the efficacy of charter schools, especially surrounding their closure rates.

However, as more and more data comes in, the case for charter schools gets stronger.

Longtime seen as too radical or experimental, charter schools have now proven to be successful, or at the very least comparable, to public schools. It’s important to note that not all charter schools outperform all public schools, and a lot of the success varies depending on the geographic location.

For advocates of the free market, school closures are a moot point. Innovation necessitates destruction (out with the old, in with the new). When the horse & buggy was replaced with the automobile, it wasn’t that one couldn’t still travel with a horse, it was just so much more efficient to take a car. Similarly, it’s a great thing that failed schools with unhappy constituents are not continuing to exist in perpetuity. 

Failed schools give insight into what doesn’t work, which helps future schools learn from past mistakes, which propels society forward. The reason charter schools have had tremendous success and growth is because of free enterprise, which leads to more educational innovation and reduced costs per student, even with a heavily involved state.

If a school or system is failing, something new needs to be tried. Charter schools, though not perfect by any means, have leaped forward in improving educational innovation and outcomes—all at a lower cost.

States should embrace this “educational hypothesis” as a way of fixing our broken and declining public education system. Our country’s children should not be held hostage to the special interests of public school teachers’ unions, and the free market should dictate which schools fail, which stay, and which should be created.