Critics have often charged that charter schools look better academically because they skim off the most talented students from neighboring traditional schools. The Stanford study rules out this explanation by carefully controlling for all known variables, including race, gender, ethnicity and achievement level.

The success of high-quality charter schools in places like New York supports Mr. Duncan’s view that charters can play an important role in efforts to reform the country’s flawed education system — but only if they are closely monitored and held to high standards.

From today’s New York Times.

And The Star-Ledger Editorial Board argues that school board elections should be moved to November:

Wayne DeAngelo, a Hamilton Township assemblyman, calls the school elections “a costly charade” where voter turnout has rarely topped 18 percent. Last April’s school board elections brought out only 14.3 percent of voters. That’s unacceptable when one considers the responsibility of the board in establishing school budgets and property tax rates to underwrite those budgets… The New Jersey Education Association, the state’s teachers union, opposes the move, saying it would politicize board elections. But no one would mistake the current school board environment for politically virgin territory.