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The one distinctive factor in a student’s attendance at a private or charter school is a parent who makes the effort to send him there.
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The gold standard is to compare those who won the lottery to attend a private/charter school with those who did not.

In **every** study using this comparison the child who won the lottery does significantly better than the child who continues to languish in the government's single-payer K-12 indoctrination camp.

Good point.

I was approaching from a different starting point, which was that poor, inner-city students who attend a private or charter school are not differentiated by native intelligence, family structure, income, or cultural milieu. The one factor that gets a child from the general public school population to another school is the parent’s determination.

Therefore(!), as your additional data strongly emphasizes, it is the school itself that produces a better educational outcome, not something intrinsic to the private/charter student population.

What a truckload of crap. Obviously you rely on ed-deform propaganda instead of personal experience teaching. The charter schools quietly toss kids who don't do well academically or who have disciplinary problems out their back door right back to public school, who must take them. Public schools don't have the privilege of picking and choosing. You complain about "single-payer...camps" but you have no problem with single sources of propaganda such as the extremely inaccurate "Waiting for Superman". There is a large movement afoot today to turn education into edu-biz, funded by hedge fund managers and the like. They make millions and millions of dollars pushing for and then operating charter schools and private schools, leaving the leftover lower-achieving or disruptive students to stay behind in public school lest they lower their touted stats. And textbook/exam publishers like Pearson are practically minting money with this scheme.

http://www.propublica.org/article/charter-school-power-broker-turns-public-education-into-private-profits

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/elizabeth-weillgreenberg/public-school-teachers_b_5104289.html

http://www.mcall.com/news/local/bethlehem/mc-lehigh-university-diane-ravitch-20150211-story.html

http://www.odwyerpr.com/story/public/1464/2013-11-18/pearsons-big-ed-biz-is-under-fire.html

http://populardemocracy.org/news/exposing-charter-school-lie-michelle-rhee-louis-ck-and-year-phony-education-reform-revealed-its

http://bizmarts.com/wordpress/archives/8967