BOSTON, Mass. – Twenty years of evidence in Massachusetts makes one thing clear: education reforms implemented by charter schools are helping students learn much quicker than in traditional public schools.

“This success was evident most immediately in test scores. Time after time, charter students outperformed their peers in traditional schools,” according to a recent editorial by The MetroWest Daily News. “A 2013 Stanford University study found students gained one-and-a-half months in reading and more than two months of math learning over their peers for every year spent in charter school.”

That evidence should be enough to convince state lawmakers to remove a cap on the number of charter schools allowed in Massachusetts, despite disingenuous and misleading claims made by the state’s teachers unions – which view charters as their competition, according to the editorial.

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“The arguments still being used against charter schools are as old as charters themselves. Opponents say charters divert funds from traditional schools, as if the kids in charter schools are undeserving of their communities’ support,” the editorial reads.

“Critics attribute the charter schools’ high scores to self-selection – students with highly motivated parents choose charters, so their success is not surprising, they say. That is an insult to the students as well as the schools. Charters expect more out of students, and students work hard for their high scores.”

Instead of acknowledging the main benefits of charter schools – “longer hours, richer curricula, empowered teachers, tutoring and supervised study, constant communication with parents” – teachers unions and other charter-haters want the public to believe the schools are scamming the best students, and leaving the rest in public schools.

Charter opponents dismiss the innovative approach charters bring to education, because unions typically oppose longer working hours and additional responsibilities expected of charter school teachers.

“It’s especially discouraging to find educators arguing that what educators do inside schools makes no difference,” the editorial said of charter-haters.

The editorial rightly points out that most public schools could achieve the same type of results as charter schools if teachers unions would allow the flexibility necessary to change the way schools do business.

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“Non-charter pilot schools, particularly schools operating under state-imposed turnaround plans, have had similar success by adopting the same reforms,” the news site points out.

That’s why,  the Daily News opines, the upcoming deadline for a legislative Education Committee to take action on a bill to lift the cap on charter schools in the state’s worst school districts is so critical.

“It’s a deadline legislators must not miss,” according to the news site.

“Whether you call it a charter, a pilot, a turnaround or just a neighborhood school, it’s what goes on inside that counts,” according to the Daily News editorial. “Massachusetts must build on previous reform efforts to make sure that the state’s neediest students have access to schools that work.”