IT'S ONE significant step for education reform, one giant leap for Governor Patrick.
This week, the state's CEO acknowledged the obvious: some charter schools are delivering impressive results - and the state needs more of that kind of school.
"We need help closing the achievement gap," Patrick said. "Charter schools have in many cases - not all, but in many cases - been an important element in helping to address the achievement gap."
That message is all the more important because as a candidate courting the teachers unions Patrick had been cool toward charters, saying he wanted to resolve tensions over the funding formula before considering lifting the charter cap. More recently, he had declared that he wanted to focus instead on readiness schools, his charter-lite alternative.
But with the state's fiscal problems stalling his readiness project, on Wednesday the governor gave the idea of more charters his blessing, proposing to lift the charter cap in 50 districts whose students had the lowest performance on the English and math MCAS.
Now, the charter success story has become hard to ignore, particularly since a careful new study concluded that a number of Boston charters had done remarkably well in lifting student achievement.
Still, Patrick deserves credit for being open-minded enough to change direction.
Coincidentally, his charter course correction comes even as Bill Gates has offered a strong endorsement of the innovative academies. Reporting on the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation's nine-year effort to help create better high schools, Gates, in a letter excerpted in the
"But a few of the schools that we funded achieved something amazing," he wrote. "Almost all of these schools are charter schools that have significantly longer school days than other schools."
Noting that many states have put limits on charter schools, Gates offered this conclusion: "Educational innovation and overall improvement will go a lot faster if the charter school limits and funding rules are changed."
So there's a double dose of good news for charter advocates this week.
But there's also a catch: the conditions Patrick would attach to any new charters.
Charters would be granted only to schools that commit to having four-fifths of their students come from the following demographics: low income, limited English proficient, special education, and dropouts or potential dropouts. New charters would also have to have at least 5 percent more special education or limited English proficient students than the district.
"Our focus in this particular initiative is on the achievement gap," says Secretary of Education Paul Reville. "We are only going to do it where the need is urgent."
But if your child is stuck in an underperforming school, you rightly see the situation as urgent, regardless of whether he or she falls into one of the governor's categories. Given the importance of education, charters should also be an option for those families.
Further, it's hard to see how the governor's desired demographic balancing can be achieved given that charters pick their students through random lotteries. Marc Kenen, executive director of the Massachusetts Charter Public School Association, offers an interesting counterproposal. To ensure that all students have an equal chance at a charter slot, districts should be required to provide lists of families they serve; charters would be obligated to send information about their school and its enrollment lottery to all those families, and in their primary language.
Finally, the administration has proposed funding changes that do a lot of rearranging to little important purpose.
One effect, however, would be to isolate a significant chunk of charter school money in a single budgetary line item. Proponents worry that would make charter funding a tempting target for charter opponents. I'd dismiss their concerns as overwrought - if charter foes hadn't already staged a legislative ambush on charter funding back in 2004.
But even with those reservations, if the governor is sincere, his proposal marks an important development in the debate.
Scot Lehigh can be reached at lehigh@globe.com. 
