Charter Schools and Their Enemies

Winner of the 2021 Hayek Book Prize A leading conservative intellectual defends charter schools against the teachers' unions, politicians, and liberal educators who threaten to dismantle their success. The black-white educational achievement gap -- so much discussed for so many years -- has already been closed by black students attending New York City's charter schools. This might be expected to be welcome news. But it has been very unwelcome news in traditional public schools whose students are transferring to charter schools. A backlash against charter schools has been led by teachers unions, politicians and others -- not only in New York but across the country. If those attacks succeed, the biggest losers will be minority youngsters for whom a quality education is their biggest chance for a better life. In order to sort out the claims and counter-claims that wars bring, this book presents some unique statistics on more than 100 individual public schools in New York City. Each charter school in this group is located in the same building with a traditional public school serving the same community. Test scores show charter school students achieving proficiency on educational tests at a rate several times the rate of other schools in the same buildings--Adapted from book jacket