This is Gwen Outen with the VOA Special English Education Report.

Many American children are preparing to return to schoolfollowing summer vacation. Most American students go to traditionalpublic schools. There are about eighty-eight thousand publicschools. Some students attend about three thousand independentpublic schools called charter schools.

Charter schools are self-governing. Private companies operatesome charter schools. They are similar in some ways to traditionalpublic schools. They receive tax money just as other public schoolsdo. Charter schools must prove to local or state governments thattheir students are learning. These governments provide the schoolswith the agreement called a charter that permits them to operate.

Charter schools are different because they do not have to obeymost laws governing traditional public schools. Local, state orfederal governments cannot tell them what to teach. Each school canchoose its own goals and decide the ways it wants to reach them.Class size is usually smaller than in traditional public schools.

The Bush Administration strongly supports charter schools as away to re-organize public schools that are failing to educatestudents.

But some state education agencies, local education committees andunions oppose charter schools. One teachers union has just madepublic the results of the first national study comparing theprogress of students in traditional schools and charter schools.

The American Federation of Teachers criticized the government'sdelay in releasing the results of the study from two thousand three.The study is called the National Assessment of Educational Progress.Union education experts say the study shows that charter schoolstudents performed worse on math and reading tests than students inregular public schools. The students did so in grades four andeight. The study found that fourth graders at charter schools wereabout half a year behind public school students in both reading andmathematics.

Some experts say the study is not a fair look at charter schoolsbecause students in those schools have more problems than studentsin traditional schools. Other education experts say the studyresults should make charter school officials demand improved studentprogress.

This VOA Special English Education Report was written by NancySteinbach. This is Gwen Outen.