Three cheers as well for ed warriors Kevin Chavous (Chairman of both DFER and BAEO) and Howard Fuller for debunking the myths about charters and making a powerful case for them:

Established interests, including many school-district and union leaders and the politicians they support, know this positive record of charter schools -- and they're fighting back to protect their turf.

The debate about charter schools in New York is not much different than the arguments heard nationally.

First, it was said there wasn't enough evidence that charters were succeeding for students. But new charters opened and the test scores piled up -- and it was shown they're doing better, by getting proportionately more students to attain state performance standards than district schools.

Robbed of one argument, opponents next jumped on the issue of students with disabilities and English-language learners. But it turns out that, in grade-by-grade comparisons, charters are holding their own on serving students with disabilities, including with higher percentages of students in high-school grades in New York City.

In any case, this conversation about special-needs students can't proceed simply based on statistics -- given the long-held concern that too many students, especially young African-American males, are wrongly consigned as "special education," when instead they too often had been robbed of quality teaching and structure.

As each new argument against charters and educational opportunity gets debunked, along comes another. Now, bizarrely, the new anti-charter school arguments -- heard from Harlem state Sen. Bill Perkins, the United Federation of Teachers and others -- is that on the one hand, charter schools don't serve enough poor students of color, while on the other hand, charter schools serve too many students of color, leading to a new racial "segregation."

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