Biden and Harris Work to Crush School Competition

He’s more opposed to charter schools than any previous president, and she’d likely be as bad

By Jason L. Riley. Excerpts:

"Charters have long enjoyed strong support from low-income racial and ethnic minorities, particularly those with school-age children. An opinion poll released in May by Democrats for Education Reform found that 77% of parents, including 80% of blacks and 71% of Hispanics, had a favorable view of charters."

"In a study released last year, researchers at Stanford University assessed the performance of students at 6,200 charter schools in 29 states between 2014 and 2019 and found that charter-school students on average outperformed their peers in traditional public schools. Moreover, academic growth among low-income minority charter students was strongest.

A growing body of research also demonstrates that school choice helps even those students who don’t exercise it. “The research on charters’ academic spillovers is positive overall, with at least a dozen studies finding that the arrival of new charter schools increases the achievement of students who remain in traditional public schools,” according to an analysis by the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, an education-policy think tank. “Consistent with this finding, average test scores for all publicly enrolled students in a geographic region rise when the number of charter schools increases.”"

"The Fordham paper noted that not all studies show surrounding traditional public schools improving academically after a charter school opens, but even the ones that don’t showed other improvements—in student behavior and attendance, for example—that could be linked to competition."