How successful have charter schools been so far...

There is no evidence that Charter Schools are better than traditional public state schools. There is evidence that overall, they give slightly worse outcomes for their students. Charter schools in the United States have long been at the centre of on-going disputes. The United States has had charter schools for more than a decade and there has been no measurable improvement in that country's overall performance in literacy, maths and science. Charter schools aim to prove their success on the basis of test scores. Charters have a number of advantages that one might expect to lead to better scores than traditional public schools. - Selections of better students, smaller class sizes and additional resources from private sources. But even on the narrow measure of standardized testing, charters are still seen to not be achieving 'excellence'.

A national study done by the Department of Education found that, on average, charter schools performed no better than traditional public schools -Based on charter schools set up in the United States. Another study by two Stanford economists involved a much larger sample size - 70 percent of all charter students. Results revealed that an astonishing 83 percent of charter schools were either no better or worse than traditional public schools serving similar populations. Researchers found that poor performing charter schools outnumbered the good ones by a ratio of 2:1. Charter schools have participated in the federal testing program since 2003 and have never outperformed students in regular public schools. This raises the question of why charters are unable to surpass public schools in their academic results. For the charters that run for profit, a focus on the bottom line compromises education equality. When states hand money to private companies, their profit margin is the difference between the state funds and what they spend to provide the education. Therefore, it stands to reason that if they can cut costs, they can make more money. This is one problem that causes charters to drastically lag behind traditional public schools. It would make no sense why parents would support charter schools when the government is simply giving taxpayers' dollars to line the pockets of wealthy businessmen at the expense of their children's education.

On top of this, the quality of education at all charter schools is compromised by the fact that Charter school teachers are not required to be qualified or registered and on average, have far fewer years of experience than the teachers at traditional public schools.

The United States lags far behind New Zealand on recent performance tests in academic achievement. Importing ideas, such as charter schools, from countries that do less well than our own fails to make sense as well as identify and protect the best aspects about New Zealand schools and puts the well-being of all New Zealand children, their families and communities at risk. New Zealand children do not get fair and equal access to educational opportunities. Our schools are increasingly separated on socioeconomic and ethnic lines. Students with the greatest need for education support end up in schools in communities with the fewest resources. Schools, students, boards, principals and teachers are in the middle of a constant tug of war between politicians as they experiment in education. This cycle is unfair on children, teachers and families and is a tremendous waste of money and resources.  We should instead, be spending our money on improving our current schooling facilities, training more able-bodied teachers and finding more ways to be able to help those children and families living in low earning areas to get the best quality education.