The United States has seen a dramatic rise in the prevalence of charter schools over the past couple of decades. T

Today, approximately three million students across the country are currently enrolled in one. Charter schools are publicly funded, but operate as private enterprises. They may choose to ignore all state guidelines except standardized testing, and can vary dramatically in the size of their student bodies.

Many families have heralded charter schools as a way for parents, particularly low-income parents, to have a choice in where their child receives an education. Vouchers allow families to apply the roughly $10,000 cost of teaching a public school student for one year to the private or religious school of their choosing. Proponents of this system claim that charter schools allow at-risk youth to receive an education that they might otherwise be deprived of. Those opposed to the charter school system, however, point to a number of problematic trends within the industry: rising segregation, corruption, financial conflicts of interest, and the siphoning of public funds to private interests.

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However, the largest backlash against charter schools is based purely on poor performance. A Pennsylvania report for the 2012-2013 academic year demonstrated that the average SPP [School Performance Profile] score for traditional public schools was 77.1, whereas the score for charter schools was 66.4. Online charter schools scored even lower, at 46.8. These reports are particularly troubling because charter schools are utilized primarily by poorer families and their children. Another troubling layer is added when resultant segregation is taken into account, as poorer families are more likely to be people of color, particularly in urban centers. Another report put out by Gordon Lafer, a political economist at the University of Oregon, found that in the growing low-budget-charter sector in Milwaukee, home to the oldest charter school system in the nation, charter school curriculums consisted of little more than standardized reading and math test preparation. Teachers were largely inexperienced, with a high turnover. Lafer questions "why an educational model deemed substandard for more privileged suburban children is being so vigorously promoted -perhaps even forced - on poor children." The trends seen in these regions are the same seen nationwide.

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Yet charter schools, often referred to as "cash cows," are very much favored by hedge funds and Wall Street. Provisions from the Community Renewal Tax Relief Act of 2000, signed into law in 2001 by President Clinton, provided tax incentives for businesses that relocate and hire residents in urban and rural areas that are considered economically depressed.

These tax credits have been renewed ever since, and banks and equity funds that take advantage of them profit immensely. They are allowed to merge this tax credit with any additional tax breaks they may have, and may also collect interest on the money they lend out. In addition, foreign investors that place a minimum of half a million dollars into charter school companies become eligible to buy immigration visas for both themselves and their families. It is no wonder, then, that companies as well known as Facebook (FB  ), Eminent Properties Trust, and others have invested millions into charter schools.

Recent studies suggest that the profitability of charter schools comes at a cost to students, as charter schools channel money into administrator and investor pockets. Yet concerns from the general public do not, for now, outweigh the profitability of a system that allows private management of public funding.