Principal Woodside in “Boy on Fire”

Charter schools, magnet schools, they take all our best students, and then we're blamed for having the worst. Kids from poverty, from broken families, a hundred years of neglect and we have to get them ready for college with just a few hours a day. Some charter school that gets 20 million dollars from Bill Gates and they get a few students into Dartmouth, it makes front page news. You want to know what the real success stories are? When a student from Aaron Burr who couldn't even read in the ninth grade manages to graduate and get a job in an auto-parts store instead of becoming a drug dealer. That's a success story, our success story. But no one cares. No one wants to hear about it.