This is unfortunately written from a half-blind anti-public education slant. Why would Success Academy not be expected do well when choosing it's students from a lottery?

I don't know much about charters, but I think the idea is that other similar schools don't do well. It depends on the model. Anyway, Success Academy is public. The article is certainly anti-union, but so are a lot of people. Also,

That your potential students and families participated in a lottery only demonstrates that you'll be receiving students and families with high motivation and a strong value of education. They'd better do well.

Hmm. Optimistic but I think in practice false. Remember right off that bat that a lot of these kids don't actually have families. They are so disadvantaged that outperforming suburban schools on tests even with some selection bias is impressive.

Yeah, if there are no barriers to entering the lottery except location, maybe there will be a soft pressure upward (because you have to have firstly heard of the program, at minimum), but I imagine it is slight. The real question is if there are barriers -- previous complaints w/r/t schools like that included morning travel time, societal pressure not to go a "rich/perceived white" school, etc. So then only the less-disadvantaged might enter the school, skewing the system. I'm not sure, but that's definitely a factor that such programs are aware of; they've made similar mistakes in the past.

Anyway I believe the point there was that blacks and whites and Hispanics performed roughly equally, and they simply don't in conventional public schools. Let me reread that section. Yeah. That's not bias, that's fact-stating. (With that said, there are generally other facts about charters and magnet schools et al, maybe contradictory, but this article is about a specific school/district/city.)

Also with philanthropy covering approximately only one percent of the whole of the US Education budget, how are we going to improve education of all US students by eroding all support for our public education systems?

Er, well, I think if you asked the author of this article, they might push for reapportionment, not erosion. So you've made a bit of a false dichotomy. Also the percentage was completely different in ~1910, and the City-Journal presents convincing evidence that the paradigm was extraordinarily successful. That, incidentally, was the part of the article that was news to me, and I think it's extremely important for two reasons. One, those philanthropists did more for civil rights than a lot of people who are better-remembered. Two, iffier, perhaps the past is a guide for the present. At the very least it's a lesson, and we need all of those we can get when it comes to education in America.