In the past decade, Barr has opened seventeen charter high schools—small,
locally managed institutions that aim for a high degree of teacher autonomy
and parent involvement—in some of the poorest neighborhoods in Los Angeles, as well as one in the Bronx.
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This is an interesting human interest story, but doesn't mention some of the critical factors, such as the effect of having primarily parents who are involved enough to get their children into the first school and whether the truant students in the second might be the "disgruntled" students that they couldn't find inside the school.
We need a lot of changes in our urban public schools, but this story didn't convince me that this is the way to do it.