The Biden administration has abandoned the Obama legacy on charter schools and chosen teachers’ unions over students, writes Jonathan Chait in New York magazine. Once again, all graduates of Urban Prep, an all-male charter school in Chicago, have been accepted to four-year colleges and universities. “Over the last decade, evidence has grown increasingly strong that public charter schools create better educational outcomes, especially for low-income, minority students in citie

Locke High has improved in its 10 years as a Green Dot charter school. But it remains a very low-performing school, report Kyle Stokes and Carla Javier for KPCC. In 2007, a majority of teachers voted to “kick out the L.A. Unified School District’s leadership and turn the school over to a charter network called Green Dot Public Schools,” they write. Math teacher Eric Strong leads the “See A Man, Be A Man” mentorship program for African-American males. Photo: Kyle Stokes/KPCC A

Step, a new documentary on the “Lethal Ladies” of Baltimore Leadership School for Young Women, is getting rave reviews. As the girls compete in a dance form developed at black colleges, they “triumph against the odds” to get to college, writes Kenneth Turan, an LA Times critic, in the Baltimore Sun. Gari “Coach G” McIntyre leads the charter school’s step team. “It’s about sacrifice, not making excuses, a positive attitude,” says Coach G. “If you can make it though step practi

New York City charter schools help neighboring district schools improve, according to a new study that’s set to be published in Education Finance and Policy. District administrators may pick up ideas from nearby charters to compete for students, said Sarah Cordes, a professor at Temple University and the study’s author. The study compares elementary school performance before and after a new charter opened from 1996 to 2010. A school within a half-mile of a charter school, for

In Bee-Brained, in Harper’s Magazine, Vauhini Vara, a former spelling champ, visits the all-Indian-American North South competition, which includes spelling, vocabulary, math, essay writing, public speaking, “brain bee” and geography contests. A father named Kalyan Mysore told other spelling dads why his son was competing in vocabulary but not spelling. “You expend effort in this, you won’t get anything out of it beyond doing well in the spelling bee. Because these days, we h