How No Child Left Behind affects Charter Schools

http://www.neighborhoodlink.com/article/Children/NCLB_Charter_Schools

From reading this article I already have found the answers to the questions that I had from my previous blog. This article was particularly interesting to me because it directly affected me seeing as I attend a charter school. I found out that although charter schools are still affected by this law, they are given flexibility and do not have to comply with all the standards that public schools have to follow. Although they are given much more flexibility, if they do not show improvement they then become at risk of being closed down. The basis of a charter school is that they follow a charter, they work under there own system going by what they feel is best for the students. While charter schools are still affected by this, if the acts such as the NCLB confilct with the schools charter then they override the government act. Since President Bush has taken office he has invested over $600 million dollars into the charter school system. Money of course is an issue in this argument due to the lack of funding, as the No Child Left Behind board has several goals for the future of the program, I wonder how they plan on paying for the extensive network of teachers they plan on having and other necessary resources for the classroom with the continously dwindeling school budgets. The No Child Left Behind act sometimes even creates a larger problem for the schools to recieve funding if they can not improve their test scores. Is the No Child Left Behind act the way to go in trying to solve this nationwide issue?

Questions I still have about this issue are:

1. I am still unclear of what benifts the NCLB act gives schools, and I wonder if I can find a website that will better explain this topic to me?

2. Is it fair for the NCLB act to give more flexibility to charter schools rather than keeping charter schools and public schools at the same standards?

3. How do our test scores affect us and how the NCLB act relates to schools in the San Diego county?