Even if you’ve put yourself on an Eva Moskowitz diet like Richard Whitmire, you might want to check out Elizabeth Green’s piece in the Atlantic on Success Academy and the growth of charter school networks more generally.

Green’s article is a thoughtful reflection on the trend, beginning with the positive.

Of all the reforms that have set out to free schools from this trap, to date I’ve seen only one that works: the implementation of charter-school networks. Large enough to provide shared resources for teachers, yet insulated from bureaucratic and political crosscurrents by their independent status, these networks are creating the closest thing our country has ever seen to a rational, high-functioning school system. They have strengthened public education by extracting it from democracy as we know it—and we shouldn’t be surprised, because democracy as we know it is the problem.

The article is actually a review essay on two books that have also been reviewed in Education Next, Eva Moskowitz’s memoir and Reinventing America’s Schools by David Osborne.

— Education Next