A fresh look at the college success records at KIPP and other major charter networks serving low-income students shows alumni earning bachelor’s degrees at rates up to four times higher than the 11 percent rate expected for that student population. The ability of the high-performing networks to make good on the promise their founders made...

About a decade ago, 15 years into the public charter school movement, a few of the nation’s top charter networks quietly upped the ante on their own strategic goals. No longer was it sufficient to keep students “on track” to college. Nor was it enough to enroll 100 percent of your graduates in colleges. What...

By Richard Whitmire Without a doubt, pro-charter school forces took a beating over the past year. There was a big setback in Georgia, and the Massachusetts vote on allowing charters to expand was nothing short of a money-losing, brutish beatdown. Things only worsened with the election of Donald Trump and his appointment of the wildly...

Often, big social movements start with just one worried parent. That’s the case in Redwood City, just south of San Francisco, where two new charter schools recently opened their doors. In Redwood City, that worried parent was Maritza Leal, a mother of three who, along with her husband, played a major role in bringing a...