They are a relatively new concept in public education that encompasses a different governance structure and clear-cut accountability. If the students and their parents, the 'customers,' do not find the school satisfactory to their needs, they can go elsewhere and take their per-pupil funding with them. Moreover, if the charter issuer does not believe that the school has lived up to it promises, the charter can be non-renewed, and the operating monies redistributed to schools taking in the students of the failed entry. Lots'block scheduling, looping, multi-age classes, longer school days, extended school years, critical role for teachers in creating curricula, strong involvement by parents, innovative usage of computers and a multitude of different approaches to instilling knowledge and enhancing the student's desire to learn. It's a long list.
Charter schools represent a different equation, one with an understandable return on investment.
By helping support such schools, which are managed and governed by people apart from the existing system, you are assisting the free market to have a role in the intellectual competition among different approaches to education, and you are abetting the democratization of school choice. This overall process will lead directly to the creation of a certain number of new and good schools, and it will indirectly lead to improved performance by the existing public school. Overall, then, your rate of return will be discernible and good. Some would like to modify this slightly mundane view of what school is all about, in favor or a broader and deeper definition of an educated citizenry. However, if we let the perfect be the enemy of the good, we will go nowhere, which is equivalent to the further deterioration in our system.