One of the recent phenomena in secondary education has been the emergence of the charter school movement. Charter schools are something of a middle ground between the public school system and private or parochial schools.
Most charter schools are publicly owned, and supported by taxpayer money, but they are exempt from many rules and regulations governing the public school system, and in exchange for their waivers they are accountable for producing certain results in student performance. The governance of charter schools varies: many of them are owned and run by the state or local government (public charter schools); others are founded by private individuals–teachers, parents, etc.–or non-profit organizations; still others are established by private corporations as for-profit charter schools.
But most charter schools are non-profit, and just like public high schools, they cannot apply selective admissions standards. Many charter schools use a lottery-based system of selecting their successful applicants.
The charter school movement has been somewhat controversial in the United States, and many on the political left, or affiliated with teachers’ unions, oppose this form of school reform because it also does away with deeply embedded egalitarian principles in the hiring and retention of high school teachers, and equality of pay regardless of performance.