How are charter schools doing compared to public schools? Among wonks, the conventional wisdom has congealed: on average, not much better. This is technically true, but as the economic analyst Adam Ozimek points out, this is misleading, as averages so often are. The most widely cited studies concerning charter schools actually paint a much more complicated, and much more encouraging, picture: Charter schools that cater principally to poor students — and especially those that primarily serve black students — do much, much better than public schools.