More than four thousand Success Academy students from 24 elementary schools across Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx gathered at Barclays Center Friday morning to celebrate their hard work and achievements ahead of state exams.

Over 4.000 Success Academy students from around New York City united at the Barclays Center for an unusual kind of pep rally. The rally was the sixth annual “Slam the Exam” event, in preparation for upcoming state exams.

More than 4.000 Success Academy students from Brooklyn, the Bronx, Manhattan, and Queens filled the Barclays Center Friday morning for a lively rally to help get them ready for their upcoming state exams.

A record 17.700 city students applied for seats in Success Academy charter schools in 2018, school officials said Wednesday. That’s up from roughly 17.000 students who applied last year to attend classes in the charter school network.

The city Department of Education ought to be bending over backward to help the best charter schools find space in which to grow and thrive. Instead, the educrats too often do the opposite. Latest case in point: Success Academy Harlem West up on W. 114th St., which shares a building known as M088 with two district-run schools. At full size, if current space allocations don’t budge, Success Academy Harlem West will have 46% of the kids — and claim to just 27% of the rooms.

All 17 seniors in the first graduating class of the city’s largest charter network, Success Academy, have gotten into four-year colleges, including Boston College, Emory University and Tufts University. They all started together in 2006, when the network opened its first elementary school in Harlem. In addition to their own ambition, they faced pressure to excel as a proof point for a charter network that has ardent fans and fierce detractors.

Three schools share the Wadleigh Secondary School building in Harlem. Two have declining enrollment — the usual result when families in a neighborhood realize a school just isn’t that good. By contrast, families love the third school, Success Academy Harlem West, where kids post great test scores. The city is taking three classrooms from the shrinking schools — and giving the space to a fourth institution rather than to SA Harlem West. Success notes that the DOE plan will force it to squeeze 14 more kids into each of its classrooms than the average for one of the two other schools. Team de Blasio is stonewalling Success space requests not just in Harlem, but all across the city.

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.