Market Data Retrieval counted 3,500 magnet schools and 8,100 alternative schools. A study suggests that students in smaller classes outperform those in larger ones. Smaller schools also appear to provide an advantage to their students. Magnet schools, originally created to draw students from affluent areas into low-income neighborhood schools, have become specialized, focusing on science, math or the arts. Performing arts high schools and international baccalaureate schools have waiting lists in many communities.
Charter schools are still accountable to their home states.
Many departments of education require them to file annual reports, pass inspections by a team every two years and reapply every five years just to stay open, said Ted Sizer, a key researcher with Harvard University in the 1984 Coalition of Essential Schools project and a co-founder of a charter school in Massachusetts. We have no electives. Everybody takes a few subjects at a time and we have team teaching. The rise of alternative schools does not mean that public schools will be able to keep doing business as usual. They will have to change, too, say the experts.