Schools Chancellor Klein is moving to expand the use of charter schools in New York City, but he’ll need to keep an eye on the Tweed Trust. There’s nothing the public school monopoly and the teachers union that dominates it hate more than competition. There are more than 1,100 public schools in New York City and merely 18 charter schools. But that mere 18 is proving uncomfortable for the Tweed Trust. That’s because charter schools are publicly funded but privately run, and they are exempt from a roost of regulations — including the teachers contract. Thus has a henchman of the United Federation of Teachers, Assemblyman Steven Sanders, a Manhattan Democrat and chairman of the education committee, pulled out what might be called the Charter School Strangulation Act of 2003.

Mr. Sanders is one of the leading recipients of campaign contributions from Randi Weingarten’s UFT, so it should come as little surprise that his Strangulation Act is made to order. The bill would cut charter school funding — even though charter schools already receive less money per pupil than traditional public schools — and it would ban the approval of new charter schools, limit charter school enrollment to 5% of the students in a school district, mandate that charter schools provide prescribed health insurance and retirement plans, and bring all charter school teachers back into the union fold. It’s amazing the coincidence of interests between unionized teachers and New York’s children.

The sad thing is that Mr. Sanders’s attack is akin to choking someone who is drowning anyway. When New York State passed a charter school law in 1998 — it was the 34 th state to do so — it limited the number of charters to 100. New York has granted 52 of these charters. While that may seem to leave some room to breathe, the question that needs to be asked is why so few applications for charter schools have made the cut. The answer is that it is by design. Three authorities can grant charters, and each is a gauntlet unto itself.

The local school districts are one source of charters, but despite being closest to the need they have granted the fewest: three. Since unions control the local boards, this is no surprise. The New York State Board of Regents is another source of charters and ranks second in generosity — if 15 charters in five year can be called that. Again, this is unsurprising; the Regents are appointed to five-year terms by the Legislature, making them functionally creatures of the speaker of the Democrat-dominated Assembly, which is in turn dominated by teachers union money. SUNY has been the most prolific charter granter, giving out 34, but even applications there aren’t insulated from union influence; they are often quashed when horse-trading with the Legislature moves the governor to cut charters to cut deals.

That any applications get through is a testament to the power of the idea of choice in education, whether in the form of vouchers or charters. Of the three charters let through by local districts, two were in New York City, a place that has seen educational failure and is increasingly ready to try something new. The city has also been the site of all four of the conversions of public schools into charter schools that have been allowed.

New York’s charter school experiment is young, but what results there are point in a positive direction. The Knowledge Is Power Program Academy in the South Bronx, established as a charter school in 2000, ranked 17 th in New York City in the eight-grade reading scores released this month, with 72% reading at or above grade level; that is opposed to an average of 32.5% in New York City. Other charter schools around the state have seen improvements in the performance of their largely disadvantaged students. The Sisulu Children’s Academy in Harlem saw 36.8% of its fourth graders scoring at or above grade level in reading this year as opposed to 21.7% last year. The Charter School of Science and Technology in Rochester has seen a jump in those scores to 37.1% from 16%. The Stepping Stone Academy Charter School at Buffalo shot to 29.1% from 17.4%. While the students in these schools have far to go, they have made wonderful progress, and they have benefited more the longer they have spent in these new schools.

The key to charter schools’ success has been freedom. “Charter schools start with less,” the vice president of the New York Charter School Resource Center, Peter Murphy, told The New York Sun. But they have more flexibility, freed from the teachers contracts. “I bet you every charter school has a longer school day or a longer school year,” Mr. Murphy said. The KIPP school in the Bronx, for instance, goes from 7:25 a.m. to 5 p.m. and meets on Saturdays. Try pulling that off in other places if Mr. Sanders manages to mandate union contracts.

The Sanders Strangulation Act may or may not gain any traction. The governor vetoed a similar proposal in 1999, but he’s significantly weaker now than he was then. The fact that such a weapon is being brandished, however, is a wakeup call for Mr. Klein. If he truly believes, as he said last October, that “Charters can stimulate innovation” and that “We need to create an environment in which charter schools can be supported and thrive,” he will need to step up his efforts. The four charter schools the chancellor is finding space for in Harlem and the Bronx will be a boon to the city. There is, however, an opportunity for Mr. Klein to use his authority to grant new charters. With the Tweed Trust seeking to strangle charter schools, there’s no time like the present.