In Maine for example, when the boards are looking into renewing a charter school's license, their test results on the state exam is heavily weighed. Schools tha

In Maine for example, when the boards are looking into renewing a charter school's license, their test results on the state exam is heavily weighed. Schools that are not performing well on the tests may get their charter revoked. So the benefit is saving children from incompetent management. My town's school department had 5 elementary schools. During 4th grade, my elementary school which I lived closest to was underperforming in state evaluation tests. This meant that they allowed anybody attending it to transfer over to any other elementary school. I opted for this option and was able to re-attend my original elementary school before I had moved. My (charter) high school consistently performed in the higher ranks for SAT & state tests. They didn't have any classes to prepare us for them, although that probably would have been useful from a college admissions perspective. If a school is performing really badly it's probably that their curriculum is flawed or that management isn't doing a good job. Competition applied to learning helps light a fire under people doing a bad job running a school.