Charter school founder reveals the 'ingredients' needed to achieve 'academic excellence'

As charter school enrollment in America booms and their students see an increase in academic performance, one founder of a Bronx-area charter school revealed there wasn’t a singular action that led to success.

"You've got to have strong, effective instruction. You've got to have great expectations. You have to have strong leadership and principals," Vertex Partnership Academies co-founder and CEO Ian Rowe told FOX Business’ Lydia Hu in an appearance on "Varney & Co."

"So more instructional time, that's one piece of it," he continued. "But if it's a mediocre school, just having more time is not the answer. All of these ingredients are what typically makes a great charter school, great."

Public schools in Georgia, Rhode Island, New Jersey and New Mexico are adding as much as 30 minutes onto school days at the same time a recent study from Stanford University indicates the average charter school student had reading and math gains that outpaced their traditional public school peers.

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The study attributed the difference in academic achievement to fewer days of learning at public schools: data shows charter school students, on average, advanced their learning by an additional six days in a year’s time for math and added 16 days of learning in reading.

Rowe confirmed that most charter schools have both longer academic years and daily school schedules.

"[There’s] particular focus on the core subjects of reading and math, reading comprehension, and just generally higher expectations because typically charter schools are located in communities where the schools that have been available have not been serving kids well," the CEO said.

U.S. charter schools have faced scrutiny from teachers’ unions and public school groups for their curriculum flexibility mixed with public funding. Last August, a coalition of charter schools filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Education over the Biden administration's regulations related to how charter schools qualify for federal grants.

"Unfortunately, the U.S. Department of Education is channeling the Administration’s apparent hostility towards charter schools into unconstitutional rulemaking, which will rob the neediest students of educational opportunity," the lawsuit read.

Other charter schools' leaders have recently called out attempts to hinder school expansion, including Success Academy CEO Eva Moskowitz, who called out the United Federation of Teachers for hypocrisy after being silent about the expansion of prominent teachers union official Randi Weingarten’s charter school.

"Yet leaders like myself and throughout the sector are struggling to get co-location at underutilized buildings. So I call that hypocritical. You want one policy for yourself, but you want another policy for others. And it's just unfair," Moskowitz previously told Fox News Digital.

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Rowe reported that Vertex Partnership Academies’ ninth-grade class has a waitlist for the next academic year; and for every first-year student seat, there are five more on the waitlist.

"Generally, there's just a much higher focus on academic excellence," Rowe concluded of charter schools.

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Fox News’ Joshua Q. Nelson contributed to this report.