The No Child Left Behind law signed by President Bush is not without its problems. But, in one respect, according to a dispatch by our Kathleen Lucadamo at Page 1 of today’s Sun, it is working swimmingly. One provision of the law is that students in persistently failing schools are to be given the option of transferring to another, non failing school. In some respects, this provision has been a flop in New York City. Out of the 300,000 children in low-performing city public schools, only about 8,000 were granted transfers for this school year — that’s less than 3% of those who were eligible. Why? Because parents only are being offered a ticket to another public school, often one far away and overcrowded, or nearby and not much better than the failing school their children are already attending. Such is the fatal flaw of the president’s education reform, that it cannot will into being more high-performing schools.

But — and this is a big but — the transfer option at least can spur greater competition among public schools. As Ms. Lucadamo reports, failing schools in New York City are losing their top students, and they’re trying to figure out ways to convince them to stay.”My colleagues are competitive and I need to come up with projects that parents value,” the principal of PS 147 in Cambria Heights, Queens, Anne Cohen, said. Ms. Cohen’s school lost about 30 students to transfers. “That’s the idea — to fight to become their choice,” the federal education secretary, Rodney Paige, told the Sun. It’s what happens when parents are given a choice. A study by the Manhattan Institute of Florida’s A+ Program, which gives vouchers to students in persistently failing schools, showed that low-performing schools improved under the program in direct pro portion to the amount of competition they faced from vouchers.

And thus is the canard that vouchers abandon public school refuted. The key is competition. It’s something to which the Tweed Trust is starting to have to adjust. The next step is for Schools Chancellor Joel Klein to turn up the heat on the charter school front. Five or more applications for charter schools are expected at the end of this month. If they are sound, Mr. Klein need only give his thumbs-up. New York’s parents will be appreciative.