The St. Louis Post-Dispatch has an article on the growth of St. Louis charter schools:
"That's one thing that happens to any high-achieving school," said Robin Lake, the director of the National Charter School Research Project. "They start attracting more middle-class families."
...One charter school in San Francisco, for instance, was roundly criticized after well-to-do students showed up. People thought the school was "creaming" — stealing middle-class children and their high test scores from area schools.
But that wasn't the case, Lake said.
..."The public schools just weren't challenging him enough," said Kendra Schneider, a certified nurse's assistant who sent her son Kurt Hartzell, 9, to the new Confluence this year. Kurt went to both private and public schools before, but he got into trouble.
"This is a more challenging curriculum," Schneider said. "It gives him something to do other than misbehave."
It seems as if the critics forget the voluntary nature of parents switching schools: it's a two-way street. There seems to be an implicit assumption made by the critics that charters couldn't have been doing a better job educating their students. But parents want their kids to be educated and, given viable options, they'll move their kids.