Eva Moskowitz on Charters Helping Regular Schools

Eva Moskowitz with great news about NYC’s charter schools – and how they’re HELPING drive improvements in regular schools as well:

New York City recently released official progress reports for the city's 1,230 schools, including measures of how each school compares with other schools that have similar students. The reports provide yet more proof that charter schools—which outperformed traditional public schools by a wide margin—are working. Eight of the top 11 elementary and middle schools by student performance are charters, and four of those charters are in Harlem.

What might be most notable about the city's findings, however, is that Harlem's experiment with school choice has improved educational outcomes not just for the select few (some 10,500 currently) who win lotteries to attend charter schools. Although critics claim that charter schools succeed at the expense of district-run schools—because, the argument goes, charters "cherry pick" students, leaving behind those who are hardest to educate—Harlem's results prove otherwise.

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