Who Benefits from School Choice? The Poor.

Responding to research that finds school-voucher lottery winners from poorly-performing school districts in North Carolina do much better than the beleaguered kids who don’t get a winning ticket, Matt Yglesias makes the vital point:

Note that this is consistent with charter skeptics’ favorite research finding that, on average, public charter schools are about the same as traditional public schools. Many schools and school districts are above average. If kids with low-quality neighborhood schools are able to attend charter schools that are about as good on average as average public schools, then those kids are going to see huge benefits. By the same token, you wouldn’t expect there to be a ton of interest in launching charter schools in districts whose traditional public schools are of above-average quality.