A.S.
I'm not in your area, but my kids are in a charter school and they love it. I love it. It's not super big, only a little over 100 students (they'll be expanding this fall with at least 3 new classes), but the director knows all of them, as well as parents & siblings. The teachers are friggen awesome. They work so hard and they're so caring. None of the curriculum is canned although, they do use a couple of really good programs for writing & math. This school is based upon expeditionary learning. Each "expedition", or unit, lasts several weeks and everything is based upon the main theme. The kids really delve into the subject and when they're done, they give back to the community in some way. For instance, the 5/6 crew updated wikipedia posts about local towns. Another class learned how to knit, made scarves, and sold them to raise money for Haiti. The kindergarten class last year collected almost 2K 3 liter pop bottles, built a green house with them , grew some vegge over the summer & donated it to the local food banks. The kids are always out and about town. They've gone on more field trips over the last two years then I went my whole school career. What other school could take the afternoon off to go to the ice rink because some generous soul donated enough money for every student to rent skates and to reserve completely the rink itself? Volunteers are encouraged to help and most of the staff are family and friends of the community. I myself volunteer in one class to help with one on one readind. Each week, the kids take part in a module to give teachers prep time and they have a blast with them. The current modules include zumba, bowling, and some sort of art class to name a few. They school does however have to follow state guidelines enough that the kids pass the tests and the kids have had no problems doing so. One of my children is special needs and they are so accommodating & welcoming up there. Much more so than the treatment he received the year he went to a regular public school. What I completely love about this school is that they recognize each child is an individual and they tailor that child's studies to their level. If the child is advanced, the parent doesn't need to worry about tests and placements; the child automatically receives more challenging work. It's the same for children with difficulties. The work as much as possible with the child before taking them out of the class for extra help. While I can't say this is exactly how your local charter schools will be, it will give you an idea of why a charter school is different from regular public schools as night and day.