North Carolina's stubborn refusal to add charter schools could sting the very people who have supported the 100-school limit. If that happens, it should be enough to get some state leaders thinking clearly about charter schools.
The state's application for almost $470 million of special federal-education funds is vulnerable to rejection because the Obama administration strongly favors charter schools.
Charter schools are a partisan issue in North Carolina. Republicans want them. Democrats don't. In the mid-1990s, when the Republicans controlled the state House for two terms, they pushed through legislation creating charter schools here. But Democrats insisted that there be no more than 100 charters.
Legislative Democrats have resisted all efforts in the past 15 years to raise that cap. Their political allies -- teacher groups and school administrators -- generally oppose charters.
The election of this Democratic president shuffled the charter environment, however, because Obama likes charters. So does his education secretary, Arne Duncan. They've created a $4 billion, three-year educational improvement program, "Race to the Top," and will begin handing out funds in the spring. Not every state will get money under the program.
North Carolina wants $469.5 million for a Perdue administration program recently submitted to Washington. At one point, charters were specifically written into the federal grant rules, but Duncan changed that. Charter advocates still say that the state has hurt its own chances by failing to do anything to expand beyond 100 of the schools.
If North Carolina does not get a share of the education funds, the blame will lie squarely in the lap of Gov. Bev Perdue and her friends in the state's education establishment.
They are the leaders who have stopped all efforts to expand charters. Ironically, it will be the traditional public schools that don't get the federal money.
Charters are publicly financed but operate without most of the government regulations. They often work with some of the most difficult children in a community. And a few of them are considered among the nation's very best schools for high-performing students.
In the early 1990s, there were fears that charters would be all-white and exclusively middle-class.
But the opposite has occurred. Charters are very popular in low-income and minority neighborhoods where parents often feel that their children are ignored by the educational establishment.
It's too late for the General Assembly to lift the 100-school cap, as it should do, and still qualify for the federal money. But the legislature should make that move in May, whether the state gets "Race to the Top" funds or not.
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