Rather than sapping resources and putting students at district schools at a disadvantage, the data in New York City show that students do better when charters open nearby. In particular, students at co-located district schools, where their school shares a building with a charter school, experience the most sharply positive spillover effects.

Parents line up for charter school lotteries where government rations out the small number of admissions. Kids who don’t get picked sometimes cry. It’s cruel and unnecessary for government to limit choice this way, but many politicians have an investment in maintaining the power of bureaucrats and teacher unions. Thankfully, some kids will have better lives because people like Eva Moskowitz fight the system.

Javeria Khan is managing director of schools at Success Academy Charter Schools in New York City. She writes that as a Success Academy teacher and principal, she learned many things from parents, but the most vital lesson is that parental investment must be earned by schools and educators. As a city, we have to stop explaining away poor educational outcomes among low-income black and brown students by assuming that their parents aren’t committed to education and instead start creating schools that inspire and deserve their commitment.

The state’s Department of Education announced last week that it will publicly release state test results a month later than usual — in mid-September. Eva Moskowitz explains that this unjustifiable delay will harm schools, and it makes no sense. Schools will be forced to begin the new year with no grasp of what drove changes in their performance, and no capacity to define goals or craft improvement strategies.

A new analysis shows not only the extent of segregation in New York City, but also that the achievement gap is just as strong even at most “integrated” schools. Success Academy schools defy the demographic trend. The network’s diverse Cobble Hill school, for example, has only a tiny achievement gap. As one report co-author, Nicole Mader, put it, while Success’ “income gaps are some of the widest . . . their test score gaps are among the smallest.”

Last Tuesday, dozens of public charter school parents, including many from Success Academy schools, traveled to Albany to advocate for these families. They met with state legislators and told them why it’s so critical that public charter schools are able to grow, and expressed a belief we all share: that every kid should get to go to a school where excellence is the expectation rather than an anomaly.

A new analysis from the Center for New York City Affairs at the New School takes a closer look by mapping the achievement gaps within each public elementary school in New York City. There were schools that defied the study’s overall trends. Those from the Success Academy charter network, which has significantly outperformed district schools on state tests, did so again, showing extremely high test scores for its students who are mostly poor minorities.

One notable exception to the trend of big achievement gaps in income-diverse schools are those that the Success Academy charter-school network that has opened in higher-income neighborhoods, such as Cobble Hill in Brooklyn. Schools like that one have managed to achieve relatively high math scores across racial groups and income levels.

Eva Moskowitz says that in truth, charter schools are not about privatization or politics. They’re about empowering parents who don’t want to sit helplessly by while their children attend failing schools. As such, they deserve support from every Democrat — and every American — who is committed to advancing equality and opportunity for all our citizens.

Rather than sapping resources and putting students at district schools at a disadvantage, the data in New York City show that students do better when charters open nearby. In particular, students at co-located district schools, where their school shares a building with a charter school, experience the most sharply positive spillover effects.