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From the opinion pages of the Wall Street Journal, this is Potomac Watch.

A new study shows that charter schools produce big gains for students,

but will it matter in the political debate? Plus, at Oklahoma Board approves the nation's first

religious charter school. Welcome, Kyle Peterson with the Wall Street Journal. We are joined

today by my colleagues, columnists, Kim Strassel and Bill McGurne. Stanford's Center for Research

on Education Outcomes or Credo has been tracking charter schools for a decade and a half.

It's latest report covers a multi-year period ending in 2019, so before the COVID-19 pandemic,

it covers two million charter school students, 29 states plus New York City and Washington, D.C.

The executive summary of this report is only about 17 pages, so I've encouraged any listeners

who are interested to go and look it up and read it. But, Kim, can you give us a sense of

what this credo analysis has found? Sure. And by the way, I think there's a couple of things about

this particular study that are just worth noting at the start to give people a sense of its importance.

So this is part of a series that has done, did one in 2009, 2013, 2023. So, tracking outcomes

over 15 years. And it's one of the largest studies ever conducted. Two million charter school

kids have been tracked over 29 states alongside a control group of students in public schools.

I think the other reason that this study is notable is because the very first one of these

that Credo did in 2009 actually didn't show great results. And that's been grabbed onto by critics

of charter schools. So now, instead, there has just been this incredibly really solid progress

over the years. And so the study that people should be looking at now is the latest one. And

...