Charter schools are proving their mettle yet again. In the new US News rankings of the nation’s top public high schools, charters took six of the top 10 spots — including first, second, third and fifth place.
Impressive: Charters represent a fraction of the nation’s public high schools. Many serve low-income, inner-city kids — and compete against well-funded high schools in wealthy suburban areas.
The 2017 rankings, released Tuesday, cover 22,000 high schools, with rankings based on state test results and graduates’ college-readiness. Charters and magnet schools made up 60 of the top 100, with BASIS charters in Arizona claiming four of the top five spots.
Here in the city, KIPP Academy in The Bronx came in 10th among charters and 29th among all US high schools. Keep it up, KIPP!
This news echoes other findings that show charters outpacing regular public schools, especially in urban areas. Here in the city, charters consistently beat out their traditional-school counterparts not only in their own districts but throughout the state.
A 2015 study by Stanford’s Center for Research on Education Outcomes found that urban charter schools “provide significantly higher levels of annual growth in both math and reading” than their traditional-school counterparts. And those gains are “larger by significant amounts for Black, Hispanic, low-income, and special-education students in both math and reading.”
What explains charters’ success? Well, they’re largely free of government bureaucracy. And their teachers and staff are rarely unionized.
And while not all charters do well, it’s far easier to shut down bad ones than those run by government — and unions.
Team Trump has wisely touted charters and other “schools of choice.” But Mayor de Blasio and his allies in the state Assembly have done all they can to halt charter growth here.
In his view, crushing the competition takes priority over having the best schools. Unions win; kids lose.