Of all the statistics cited by Examiner reporter Lisa Gartner to document the increase in student enrollment in the Washington region’s public schools for the 2012-2013 school year, one stands out. While 1.4 percent more students enrolled in DC Public Schools, 11 percent more students signed up for the city’s public charter schools — the largest enrollment surge of any system in the metropolitan area.

So during the District’s largest increase in public school enrollment in 45 years, about 85 percent of the new students (3,457) chose to attend charter schools rather than enter the centralized, traditional public system. Charter schools are attractive to parents because they are free to choose their own policies and curriculum, adopt innovations such as longer school days, and they are not hamstrung by contracts with the Washington Teachers Union, which opposed their existence from Day One. Students at charters — most of which serve low-income neighborhoods and have a greater percentage of black and Hispanic students — have reading and math proficiency rates 10 and 20 percent higher (respectively) than those of students in the traditional public system.