NY Times Article on Success Academy

Author's note: Although I am grateful for the recently signed peace treaty with BCS, I still have concerns about how charter law is structured.  Just as I assume BCS will continue to advocate for what they believe in, I will continue to highlight issues that I believe are important to the education community.  This article shouldn't be interpreted as a specific concern with BCS, but more a concern with the way state and federal laws are structured.

The NY Times presented a piece of Eva Moskowitz, head of the NYC charter chain Success Academy.  You can read the article here.

Diane Ratvich, a former charter advocate and now charter critic, was quoted in the article.  The quotes in the article seemed somewhat benign.  However, Diane has recently posted a follow-up of her own, indicating that the NYT author watered down her comments.  Here's a link to her article.

Whatever the truth is, I believe that the charter model can only be successful if it proves itself on a representative sample of students.  The only way for that to happen is really through conversion charters.  In a  conversion charter, an entire school is converted in place.  That school must admit all students in the area, and must meet all of their needs.  This approach would avoid the question of whether the student body is representative of the wider population.  Then we can gauge the results.  I look forward to seeing peer reviewed articles that look at this type of data.