Alternative/Charter Schools

Also in recent years, there has been a proliferation in alternative schools. Most prominent of these has been the movement towards charter schools. Charter schools are public schools (both owned publicly and publicly funded), which are run independently of the local school district and tend to have less bureaucracy, with mixed results on the students' performance on standardized tests. Additionally, charter schools can have a "theme": some specialize in teaching mathematics and science, others in teaching students who are considered "at-risk."