Charter schools are similar to public schools, but the major difference is that the schools have been granted operation autonomy. The schools operate under a charter or contract, but the states hold the school accountable for some terms needed to improve the performance of students and specify the conditions under which the school can operate.  This type of school began operation or established in 1992 in St Paul, Minnesota and it has played a vital role in the education system reform. In the United States, there are over 6000 charter schools across the states and the District of Columbia. This type of school is not permitted to impose admission requirements, cannot charge tuition, and must select its applicants by lottery (Batdorff et al., 2014).

Initially, the charter movement was largely criticized as some people believes that its creation will affect or drain the resources of the public and its ability to serve all populations including special-needs, lower-ability, and minorities population (Cobb and Glass, 1999; Fiske and Ladd, 2000; Frankenberg and Lee, 2003). But the few the supported the ideology explained that the introduction of charter schools would create competitive pressure on all schools (especially public) to improve and be innovative in their teaching approach while improving or proffering solutions to racial segregation by improving or enhancing racial integration of both rich and poor students to learn in the same classroom (Finn et al., 2000; Kolderie, 2004).

Over the last two decades, there has been a quick expansion in the number of studies aimed at examining the impact or effectiveness of charter schools thereby making it difficult to provide an accurate account of these studies. However, most of these studies revealed that the effectiveness of charter schools differs widely across different charter schools, states, and districts. To measure the effectiveness of charter schools, achievement effects and effects on other outcomes like test scores behavioral outcomes, etc. were used as indicators. A study conducted by Zimmer et al. (2003) in California revealed that charter schools as no effect on math for secondary students but have small positive effects on reading, while it has no reading effect for elementary students. Solomon and Goldschmidt (2004) revealed positive reading effects for elementary students that have been attending charter schools for 3 years compared to other schools. The result also explained that negative reading effects were recorded for secondary students that attended charter schools for 3 years compared to other students in other schools. In 2006 and 2007, a study was conducted in North Carolina and Texas respectively. The result explained that there were negative reading and math effects in grades 4 -8 (Bifulco and Ladd, 2006; Booker et al., 2007). Ni and Rorrer (2012) show that charter schools have a small negative effect on language arts and Maths in grades 1-6 with no effect on language arts in grades 7-11.

However, most of the studies conducted from 2001 to date have all found positive effects on charter schools. The only finding that found no effect of charter schools or that concluded that charter schools are not effective as the traditional public schools in the study by Mathematica (Gleason et al., 2010). But the study still revealed that there are some positive effects for urban charter middle schools. In conclusion, it could be seen that the effect or effectiveness of charter schools varies or differs from one location to another.