Eric Owens:

And the real success story in charter schools is not in wealthy suburbs where comfortably middle-class kids and rich kids attend public schools with abundant resources, Mahoney stressed, but in urban areas where poor kids live and where public schools have been failing students and families for decades.

“You are beginning to see the academic outcomes the teachers unions have feared. Kids attending charter schools are learning much more, as measured by the same math and reading tests kids take in traditional public schools,” Mahoney said.

“Poverty is not a final destination for these kids. Charter schools have shown that kids from impoverished backgrounds cannot be written off.”