When I graduated from high school, the first charter schools in America were just opening their doors. But I have advocated for, worked with, and supported their right to serve families for more than twenty years now. I remember nearly crying during one of my early visits to North Star Academy in Newark, NJ (where I worked), after seeing its morning college ritual with dozens of little kids dressed as the mascots of some of the nation’s most prestigious colleges and universities. Learning education policy was like drinking from a fire hose, and it was still exhilarating. And meeting many of the Northeast’s leaders on charters (and sometimes choice more broadly) was always like running into a celebrity. I was dumbstruck the first time I met Eva Moskowitz, having read about her exploits on the New York City Council as its education chair before striking off to start a single charter school called Success Academy. There was Geoffrey Canada, Floyd Flake, of course Mike Bloomberg and Joel Klein, Cory Booker, Governors Pataki and Christie, and others in the NYC/New Jersey area who believed deeply in the role charter schools played in providing choice and opportunities to families who had been poorly served by sclerotic district bureaucracies. And there were thousands of teachers who were proud to be a part of a results driven movement to right a historic wrong in how we distribute educational opportunity in this country….
