In 2002, I became a fifth-grade teacher at the lowest-performing public school in the South Bronx, New York City’s lowest-performing school district. A mere 16 percent of PS 277 students could read at grade level. The first charter schools were just opening up in the neighborhood back then; there were virtually no alternatives to the schools that had failed children for decades.

In my role at the American Enterprise Institute, I study and write about education, including charter schools. But my focus has seldom strayed from the question that motivated me to become a teacher in the first place: How can we ensure that disadvantaged children in places like the South Bronx have every opportunity to succeed in school and in life?

Read the full testimony here.