01:00 AM EST on Tuesday, December 7, 2004

The General Assembly should show compassion for children struggling in second-rate schools by rescinding its sneak attack on charter schools this year in the state budget.

With little, if any, debate, the Assembly declared in the budget's Article 23: "The Board of Regents shall not grant final approval for any new charter school to begin operations in the 2005-2006 school year."

What do legislators have against charter schools? They are funded by public money, often with help from private charitable sources, but are allowed to be more innovative than other public schools. Well, although only 1.5 percent of Rhode Island public-school students attend them, charter schools offer laboratories of how to better educate children: without the stifling bureaucracies, regulation, and absurdly inflexible rules imposed through contract negotiations on typical public schools. Special interests that contribute heavily to the campaign coffers of legislators -- and through this system reap vast money and power -- seem to dislike competition from these new and different schools.

This is bad news for Rhode Island's students, because the evidence is strong that charter schools are, in general, a worthwhile experiment.

As Linda Borg reported in a Nov. 24 news story ("Charter schools score well,"), "The state's charter schools routinely outperform their district peers and, in some cases, their test scores exceed the state average." They offer poorer urban children the chance to learn at a pace with students in good suburban schools, despite the special challenges faced by city schools.

Surely, the legislature is wrong to make it harder for the urban poor to receive a first-rate education. Charter schools should be allowed to emerge where parents and educators believe they present a better option than the standard schools.

Compassion for children may not motivate lawmakers, but voters might -- especially since a number of incumbents were only narrowly re-elected Nov. 2. Citizens should call their legislators and ask them to rescind the moratorium on new charter schools.