Writing on the Huffington Post, Marian Wright Edelman profiles Excellence Charter School in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, arguing that policymakers should do more to replicate these kind of successful schools:
Excellence Charter School is clearly a model that works. It is an antidote to the dysfunctional approaches to education in too many schools around the country. It has taken a few basic components — quality teachers, a strong curriculum, character development, high expectations for performance and incentives for achievement — and is using them to make fine men of these boys. This model must be replicated in thousands of school districts in depressed urban and rural communities across our nation. Our political decision makers seem to have no problem finding the money and resources to reproduce juvenile detention centers in cookie cutter fashion. Why not reproduce programs that help develop our children into strong, self-sufficient, contributing adults?