Charter School Research

The charter school, born from American basic educational reform in the 1990's, is a new school. What is called charter schools mean schools that come into existence through a contract with a charter authority agency, generally local boards, State boards. Charter schools' runners are usually some groups, companies or individuals such as educators, parents and community leaders. These schools receive public funds and free from regulations that public schools must follow. However, it is held accountable for achieving the goals set out in the contract including improving students' performance.Firstly the author tried to explore the background of Charter schools from several aspects such as the idea of school-based management and school-selecting system in this article. This helps us to grasp the schools completely. Then comes the status of charter schools. It included the legislation, competition, and funding of charter schools and so on. The accountability system is the lifeline of charter schools, so we introduced it in a whole chapter in order to understand deeply the key reason that resulted in charter schools booming. Every coin has two sides. As respect to the influence of charter schools in America, the author believed there were two sides too. On the one hand, charter schools have received specific support from American congress and government. One the other hand, many charter schools have been shut down owing to many problems such as lacking of set-up or operating funding or poor management during the course of their development.Stones from other hills may serve to polish the jade of this one. Although some of charter schools' features such as small school size, low student-teacher ratio can't be realized in China at present, it offered a new thought to school-running and educational management system reform. Besides, it is useful to emphasize the responsibility of running schools and the education consumers' right.