Some 15 years after the No Child Left Behind Act promised to close the racial achievement gap, it looked as if charter schools were making real progress toward that goal. Using data from 2015 to 2019, Stanford's Center for Research on Education Outcomes reported that more than 200 charter networks were closing or even reversing racial disparities in reading, math, or both. Their Black and Latino students were equaling or outpacing white students in the same states. 'More critically,' the report's authors wrote, 'there is strong evidence that these gap-busting schools can be scaled.' Then, just as the charter sector was posting striking results, many school networks strayed from their commitment to academic excellence. Staff-led demands for social justice convulsed the schools. 'Anti-racism' and 'equity' displaced effective instruction as their top priority. Indeed, I experienced the period's fervor firsthand in Ascend, the charter network I founded in Brooklyn. In a 2019 blog post,...
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