Charter schools share one thing with public schools – their source of funding. These are publicly funded places that are given the freedom to do what they please for a few years. As long as they bring in improved results, they’re allowed to use whatever method of teaching they will. They are like private schools, except that they are funded with public money. This is a huge improvement over public schools if there is a specific method of teaching that you favor.

But as critics point out, for all the freedom that they are given, they don’t perform as well as you would expect. In a straight-out charter schools vs public schools face-off, there are always some charter schools that do better than the public schools in the district, some that are just the same, and some that do considerably worse. Critics feel that whatever rate of improvement they are able to bring in is hardly worth the extra trouble. Supporters of charter schools complain that the method that the critics use to assess performance is hardly fair.

Stanford’s Center for Research and Education Outcomes, an organization whose purpose is to study charter school performance, finds some encouraging trends. Analyzing standardized test scores that charter school students bring in in 15 states and comparing them with public school results in those areas, they’ve found that in math, charter school scores are better by a third. But this comes with a big caveat. When you compare improvement rates over absolute scores, the public schools do much better. When it comes to comparing reading scores, charter schools are nowhere near what public schools achieve. Basically, in the charter schools vs public schools debate, it’s hardly clear who does better. There are areas in which the charter schools do better and areas in which the public schools to better. Does the country need to sanction the presence of the whole alternative schooling system for results like these?

But there’s another way to look at this, charter school supporters claim. Charter schools do very well for students who come from economically disadvantaged areas – for people who are basically first-generation immigrants. If charter schools don’t do as well as public schools in reading and language skills, supporters argue, it’s because they cater mostly to non-English speaking children who are learning the language for the first time. When you look at non-English speaking children in public schools and compare their performance levels to what is seen in charter schools, it’s easy to see, they say, that the charter schools are vastly superior.

There is a lot to be said for what charter schools are able to do for the poorest and most disadvantaged students. Unfortunately, it’s in this part of the community that the most parental neglect is seen. And these are the parents are most likely to never take the trouble to look up a good charter school.

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Let’s take a closer look – what exactly is a Montessori charter school? What does the Montessori Method teach? In today’s preferred vernacular, you could say that the Montessori philosophy favored a kind of holistic teaching. In any regular school, every child is put through a predetermined course of lessons; in the Montessori Method, the child is central; the child’s talents, temperament and preferences matter. There are no separate classrooms for children of each age. Instead, it’s a learning environment – a large common area where children of all ages sit and learn. Children don’t learn through looking at the chalkboard and writing stuff into notebooks. Instead, they use specially designed educational tools that engage all of their senses. And children are allowed to pick and choose what they will learn – there is no lesson plan as such. There is plenty of time devoted to music, language, art and understanding nature. And oh, there are no report cards. Teachers merely keep records of how a child is overall, how hard he’s trying to learn and so on.

So how does the Montessori charter school do with children who are older? Do they perform well? It would appear looking at initial research into how children from these schools perform at standardized tests, that the Montessori Method does work for older children as well. A study published in the Science journal on hundreds of Montessori fifth-graders has found that they do at least as well as children from regular schools. And often, they do better. And it isn’t just how well these children do in science and math. They have better academic and social skills as well. In elementary school, children who are taught in the Montessori way are better at understanding society and understanding language structure, the study reports.

In middle school, another study finds, children are far more positive and motivated when educated in the Montessori Method. They participate better in class and they are more motivated. Now that we have a Race to the Top grant for charter schools under a special government program, it certainly looks like Montessori charter schools will win.

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For the most part, a charter school is built out of public taxpayer money. However, they are run by private management. Anyone can set apply for a license to be granted a charter to run the school. And they receive all kinds of waiver as well in return for a promise that they will do better than the public schools in that district. They get a charter to do as they please for about five years. If the management fails to get results that are any better than the public schools in the district, they don’t have their charter renewed.

Charter laws actually have been with us ever since 1990; and they have been pretty popular too. There are several thousand of them across the country today. The fact that there are so many charter schools up and running today can only prove that they’re doing better than the public schools it would seem. Does that mean that the charter school concept is a proven success as a better idea than public school? If a bunch of like-minded people are given the freedom to run and manage a school in the way they are personally passionate about, as that usually result in better grades all around?

The question of what is a charter school can be answered by pointing to a number of common qualities that these places have. Usually, a charter school has only half as many students enrolled as the typical public school (which usually has about 550 students). Charter schools usually offer course alternatives that regular schools don’t, and the use new and experimental teaching methods to. Usually, charter schools are run for students from a minority group or for children from poor neighborhoods who feel that the traditional public school system that doesn’t really give them the education they deserve. And they are free.

So what is a charter school found to regularly contribute? What are the advantages of sending your child to a charter school instead of a regular public school? To begin with, since they cannot exist without having their students get better grades, they work harder and the results show. Better still, when a school district with a charter school just routinely beats the public schools of the district, the public schools will often feel motivated enough to do better themselves. And then, teachers and educators are able authentic to use experimental teaching methods in classrooms here that may never be seen elsewhere. In a word, there is plenty of choice that you get this a parent.

Not everyone agrees on the superiority of the charter school method though. They happen to be very unpopular with teachers unions, for instance. They certainly can pick and choose what students they will accept. Sometimes, these choices can be for a certain race. Many parents are put off by these.

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So we are clear about one thing to deal with these places – anyone can attend them. But what is a magnet school really – what makes it special? Certain things to do – for instance, let’s say that you are a parent who finds the Montessori particularly agreeable and you wish to school your child this way. Except, your local public school is not Montessori; but you’ve heard that there is a school 30 miles away that does offer Montessori. Could you send your child there? You look up information on the school and find that it’s listed on the magnet list. You’re in luck!

Magnet schools have been around for at least 50 years now. Back then, the government was extremely focused on putting the whole racial segregation thing behind as quickly as possible. Anything that made people want to travel long distances to get into a school elsewhere seemed like a good idea – it would be like busing, except it would be popular because people would go all the way somewhere just because there was a school that taught things that they wanted. They could put a magnet school in a black neighborhood, and get it to teach special things that lots of white kids would want to learn too. And so, white parents would be happy to send their children all the way to school and a black district. The whole idea behind magnet schools was to encourage racial acceptance. They were a political thing.

These days, many of these schools still help members of society from different races come together and accept one another. But since racial intolerance isn’t as much a problem today, they mostly concentrate on providing special educational facilities. For instance, they are often schools for gifted students. They often look up lists of top-ranking students in the entire district and send out invites. They have special performing arts programs or special mathematics or science programs. Sometimes, they use special teaching methods like the Montessori Method or the Gardner Style.

Those who support magnet schools like to point to how they offer facilities for gifted children that are available nowhere else and how they offer special instructional methods. But the critics point to how these schools take gifted children away from regular schools and deprive regular non-gifted children of the kind of inspiration being with a star pupil in class can be. And anyway, they argue, to have magnet schools takes a lot of money – money that comes from a common pool that would otherwise have gone to regular schools. Why can’t the richest country in the world make all schools good enough, they wonder.

All good arguments. Perhaps the government should begin to redefine what is a magnet school and really pattern all schools after them.

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Some of the requirements that one needs to meet in order to gain admission includes an approximate score of 3.85 in GPA, and 34.5 MCAT score. Based on these scores, it is easy to tell that gaining admission to the college is extremely competitive, and only the best can succeed. Being the only medical college with private ownership in the Southwest United States, the school recognizes that many more people would like to attain their medical-related accreditation therein. As such, the college introduced an accelerated pre-clinical curriculum that students complete in just one and half years. Normally, the pre-clinical curriculum is fully covered in two to three years.

While applying for admission in Baylor College of Medicine, one has to include an application fee, which differs from one year to the other. The application fee for the 2010 vacancies was $90. This fee is usually non-refundable regardless of whether one’s application goes through or not. When applying for enrolment vacancies, the hopeful students need to know that the college (just like others) charges tuition fees to all students. Though the tuition fee may change between admission years, students can check the applicable fee from the BCM website. It is worth noting that the students will have to incur other non-stated costs in addition to the tuition fee. Such include accommodation fees, food-related costs, and transport costs.

On gaining admission to the Baylor College of Medicine, a student can expect to benefit from some of the best-rated resources in Texas. The college’s faculty-student ratio was at 1:2.8 in 2010, which is impressive especially considering that the faculty is such an important resource in any college. Even more admirable is the fact that the college has a dedicated team of 1,854 full time faculty members. Additionally, the college emerged 22nd among the best research institutions throughout the United States. In another survey gauging the quality of service provision among primary care providers, the college emerged in 28th position countrywide.

Both male and female student hopefuls have an equal enrolment opportunity. Baylor college of Medicine’s 2010 admissions statistics show that gender distribution was at 50.1 percent male admissions, and 49.9 percent female admission. This means that of the 725 students enrolled, 362 were female, while 363 were male. 

Baylor College of Medicine would make a good school choice for students interested in urology, general surgery, diagnostic radiology, psychiatry, pediatrics, ophthalmology, neurology, internal medicine, emergency medicine, and anesthesiology.

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Research funding for biology may have a future of cutbacks and budget rein-ins; but biology scholarship money that is intended to help future biology scholars get their degrees and their diplomas has never looked better. Student hopefuls who have an interest in biology though may find the going not entirely without challenges. A large number of the biology scholarships that are available today are earmarked for minority students. Providers of financial scholarships these days place a lot of focus on minority communities. Since the minorities make up half the workforce, they believe that all scholarship money should be apportioned in like manner.

While this is excellent news for those who come from a minority group or race or those who are too poor to afford higher education, it can make things competitive for hopeful students who don’t qualify. Fortunately for them though, not all biology scholarships require minority status in an applicant. There are many that only ask for indigence or academic achievement – great grades in high school or college biology credits.

Anyone hopeful of a little help from a scholarship should know that there are all kinds of options open at every level of study – the undergraduate level and graduate level, and in every field of biology right from botany to the environmental sciences.

The National Institutes of Health has a scholarship worth $20,000 a year that they pay out for four years to qualifying students. The National Garden Clubs Inc College Scholarships gives out 34 scholarships every year worth $3500. The Association for Women in Science College Scholarship has a great biology scholarship that’s worth $1000 and that goes out to five women every year. There are dozens of these that anyone can try for.

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