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President Obama’s Race to the Top education initiative strongly supports charter schools, but can these institutions save failing public school districts? While there are currently more than 4,700 charter schools in America, their track record is mixed. Some campuses have garnered tremendous accolades and accomplishments, while other charter schools are negatively impacted by financial management issues, spotty performance, and disruptive conflict with teachers' unions and districts.

Charter Schools: Campuses that Outperform

Charter schools can provide students with a medley of benefits that the traditional public school finds difficult to rival. Typically, charter schools have smaller classes, which foster discussion and allow teachers to spend more time with each student. Other schools have experimented with innovative teaching methods, including curriculum focused on AP coursework or even virtual learning. For example, as reported by the , the students at the Basis Scottsdale Charter School in Arizona are required to take a minimum of six AP exams before their senior year.

While charter schools overall may have a mixed record of performance, research does demonstrate that the top charter schools outperform their traditional counterparts. As an reveals, after attending a Boston-area charter school for just one year, middle school students improved their academic performance by 15%. Another Stanford University study discovered that students attending New York City School District’s charter schools had a greater probability of closing performance gaps between themselves and their more affluent counterparts.

Could homeschooling no longer be an option that parents and students have? Based upon recent legal rulings, children can be mandated into public school classrooms, with parents stripped of their right to administer homeschooling. For example, in North Carolina, a judge recently demanded that one mother’s home-schooled children be removed from her “at home classroom� in order to engage in more “challenging� curriculum provided by publically funded schools. What does this hold for the future of homeschooling?

The Verdict on Home School Rights

As reveals, a North Carolina judge has demanded that one family’s children be placed in public schools after debating whether or not the children were receiving adequate lessons and assessments at home. The mother, in this case, Vanessa Mills, argues that she initially pulled her children from the public school environment because she felt that her kids were not being sufficiently challenged. As such, for the past four years, Vanessa Mills has been taking charge of her children’s educational development through at-home lessons and instruction. While most parents can capably educate their children at home, the Mills case is rare and complex, as the children’s father brought the issue to trial, arguing that the efforts were not up to par.

According to the father’s lawyer, speaking on his client’s behalf, homeschooling has not provided his children with adequate socialization that can be achieved from the public school

As more children of all ages are excelling in standard public school programs, many districts have implemented new curriculum pathways for accelerated learning opportunities. For students who demonstrate above-average cognitive potentials, International Baccalaureate Programs are providing gifted children with the chance to learn in an enhanced classroom with increased pace and rigor, amidst peers working at similar cognitive levels and abilities.

International Baccalaureate Programs (IB)

While each public school offers different honors and accelerated courses, International Baccalaureate programs are fully inclusive curriculum pathways. This means that, instead of only taking a few honors courses, students instead engage in a constant IB class schedule.

IB Programs are only available at specific schools; however, they are still publicly funded. Essentially, "The IB is a nonprofit educational foundation, motivated by its mission, focused on the student." Programs are available for students ranging from ages 3 to 19, to help develop the "intellectual, personal, emotional and social skills to live, learn and work in a rapidly globalizing world."

Since 1968, the IB Program has grown to work with 2,384 schools in 129 countries. Currently, 645,000 students are enrolled in the various IB Programs around the world, while being provided with three different programs: The Primary Years, The Middle Years, and The Diploma Program.

This video offers an overview of the International Baccalaureate Programme.

The Primary Years

The Primary

Should female and male students be taught together in the same classroom? For decades, this debate has enjoyed its equal share of both proponents and opponents. Interestingly, recent research reveals that girls and boys do indeed learn very differently, which adds another level of consideration in the co-ed education debate. In fact, how teachers address the learning discrepancy between the two genders impacts academic performance � a factor critical in the co-ed debate.

The Debate of Cognitive Development

The Recent Academic Data

Indeed, boys and girls face different emotional and physical issues as young students. However, research shows that this difference also delves into the realm of cognitive development. In fact, research has found that boys� and girls� cognitive development results in markedly different performance abilities � which partially may be due to the co-ed classroom environment. In recent years, girls have outperformed boys in reading levels assessed on main tests. According to research compiled by educator Sara Mead, while the gap between boys and girls is smaller at the early elementary level, it increases as students reach eighth grade through high school.

When looking at the testing data in science and math, reports once proved that boys� cognitive performance soared over that of girls� abilities. While boys are still scoring higher on average than girls in math and science, it has been noted that males “outperform girls only slightly in math and science, in a less drastic proportion than girls� achievements,� according to Mead.

Learning a language can be a difficult process. Most languages are constantly in flux, with new words regularly added to the lexicon, and old ones are dropping away. Just getting a handle on the vocabulary itself can be overwhelming. Throw into the mix the grammar rules, the punctuation nuances, and even all the slang words, and learning a language can seem as daunting a task as climbing Mount Everest barefoot and blindfolded.

Thankfully, there are increasingly more programs and schools designed to help students who wish to learn a language. Immersion schools are one such program, and they are primarily designed for elementary to high school-aged students. For example, Clark High School in Las Vegas, Nevada, offers a full immersion Chinese school for its students, as well as the Pioneer Valley Chinese Immersion Charter School in Massachusetts. For some students, full immersion in a new language is the best way to learn. For others, it is simply too difficult to learn a new language without any “references� to the language they already know. Here are the advantages and disadvantages of full immersion schools, and what to expect if your child attends one.

The advantage of immersion programs

Many people believe the best way for a student to excel in a foreign language is an immersion program. Advocates also suggest the younger the child, the better it is to send them to an immersion program, and that’s why full-immersion daycare or preschool is so popular. These can