Low-income families have been trapped in local public schools for decades, but charter schools have started to give them a way out. In How the Other Half Learns, Robert Pondiscio writes about what he learned from shadowing teachers for a year in a Success Academy K-4 charter school in the Bronx. Though he expected Success Academy’s achievement to come from its curriculum and instructional approach, driven by teachers and school leaders, his answer was the “third rail in education:” school culture.
Success Academy is a network of charter schools despised by anti-school choice types with a passion. The first school opened in 2006 with 157 students, and the network has grown to 47 schools serving 17,000 students. Founder Eva Moskowitz has been shockingly successful in creating schools for low-income students in New York City whose test scores rival, and
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