“Charter school laws have been arguably the most influential school reform efforts of the past several decades,” write economists Douglas Harris and Feng Chen.
Since the first law creating these independent public schools of choice was passed in 1991, we’ve learned many lessons about their impact on students, the traditional K-12 system, and the communities where they exist. Here are three of those lessons:
1. Charter schools reduce academic inequality by closing student
achievement gaps.
2. Charter schools raise the overall quality of public schools.
3. Creating more charter schools will improve the quality of K-12 public schools and reduce inequality in America.
This is what I call the virtuous improvement cycle of charter schools.
