I'm not entirely sure cherry-picking is the word I'm looking for, but here goes.

The current lot of charter schools springing up in disadvantaged neighbourhoods seem to be founded & managed by groups & individuals with tremendous concern for the kids, amazing work ethics & seemingly limitless energy. I don't see any surprise that these schools tend to outperform public schools in regions where the school boards are made up of wanna-be career politicians or who don't have much faith in the children they are supposed to represent.

I'm concerned that the message from this will be "privatize all schools". Creating the kind of charter schools that are this successful is a difficult, time-consuming process, and one that seems unique to each situation. Even the successful ones discussed here have had setbacks, and have had to rethink their methods many times. I don't think this is a process that can be packaged and sold at will. There are a lot of lessons to be learned on why these charter schools are successful, but they can be applied to any school system, public or charter. Any privitization that is ideologically based and not based on fixing specific problems & responding to specific circumstances will probably create the same problems as the public schools they replace, but be less accountable.