NEW YORK – Harlem charter school students are outpacing their peers in nearby government schools.

Charter supporters hope that news will help bring about the end of union domination of New York City’s education system.

A new Stanford University study finds that while Harlem students are making learning gains in both charter and district schools, charter students are leading the way, reports Bob McManus of the New York Post.

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“Overall, researchers found that charter- school kids learn more in a year than do their district-school counterparts – especially in math,” McManus writes.

The good news continues: “Eight of the 11 most successful elementary and middle schools in the (New York City’s) five boroughs are charter schools – with four of those to be found in Harlem,” McManus reports.

Harlem playing a prominent role in the charter school success story isn’t an accident.

Nearly 20 years ago, charter school proponents decided to make Harlem – a large neighborhood in the borough of Manhattan – ground zero in New York City’s charter school movement, reports McManus.

The theory was that a group of successful charters schools clustered in a needy neighborhood would make the effectiveness of the schools obvious to parents and taxpayers.

On the other hand, if a smattering of charter schools scattered throughout the city proved to be successful, teacher union and education establishment leaders could dismiss them as flukes, which would undercut public support of expanding charters elsewhere.

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The United Federation of Teachers (the city’s teachers union) understood that a “successful cluster” of charter schools in a neighborhood known for poverty and social dysfunction would pose “an existential threat” to the union, and that’s exactly what has occurred, McManus notes.

Now, organizers want to build on that “cluster strategy” to bring charter schools into middle class neighborhoods, particularly into the Upper West Side and Brownstone Brooklyn. Those neighborhoods are “famous for translating public-school frustrations into direct, effective political action,” McManus notes.

“Give these parents a taste of charter-school success and it’ll only be a matter of time before the union’s tools on the City Council and in Albany are singing a different tune.”

It’s a bold plan, but it might hit a snag if the UFT succeeds in electing a new mayor who is deeply beholden to the union.

In that case, “the ground beneath the charter movement stands to shift substantially,” McManus writes.

But for now, the success of New York City’s charter school movement is beyond challenge or denial. The strategy of 20 years ago is paying big dividends.

The movement’s next challenge is to ensure that the UFT doesn’t undo all the gains that have been made so far.