Mayor Bloomberg, renewing his call for accountability in education, yesterday vowed that, if re-elected, he will fight to eliminate the statewide cap on new charter schools and to convince Albany to give the mayor independent authority to create the schools in the five boroughs.

The Bloomberg administration has long backed the idea of lifting or eliminating the statewide cap of 100 charters. Last spring, the schools chancellor, Joel Klein, also lobbied in Albany for the power to create “limitless” power to create new charter schools.

In yesterday’s campaign pledge, which was the third major proposal of his re-election campaign, Mr. Bloomberg put his significant mayoral muscle behind the administration’s charter school goals. He also for the first time vowed to win a significant power – the ability for the mayor to grant charters, circumventing Albany’s Board of Regents – that has never before been sought by the city. Mr. Bloomberg pledged that he would more than quadruple the number of charter schools operating in New York.

“Unless the state removes the cap and ensures that the mayor has the independent authority to create new charter schools in New York City, we will have reached a dead end,” Mr. Bloomberg said, standing with charter school students and parents at Hunter College. “Let’s be clear: Leaving the cap and the current state approval process in place is no more acceptable than leaving in place the old Board of Education bureaucracy, or social pro motion, or the policies that prevented principals from being the leaders in their schools. All of these barriers to quality schools have been cleared away. Now it’s time to clear away the barriers to the creation of charter schools.”

Two years ago, Mr. Bloomberg said he would create 50 charter schools within five years. Since then, the city has created 24 charter schools, which are public schools that operate independently, without many of the restrictions that bind traditional public schools.

About 12,000 students in New York City now attend charter schools, and another 3,000 to 5,000 are on waiting lists. Charter students last year performed 13 points above the citywide average on the state math exam and nine points above the citywide average on the English Language Arts exam.

More than 40 applicants are clamoring to be granted one of the 15 charters remaining for the entire state, and more than 50 planning teams have expressed interest in applying for a charter down the road. Mr. Bloomberg said yesterday he would create at least 100 charter schools by 2009.

Charter school advocates praised the mayor’s proposal. “I think it’s fabulous,” the director of development and policy for the New York Charter Schools Association, Peter Murphy, said. “I think the mayor is right on target here on this vision for more charters for the city.”

Mr. Murphy said convincing lawmakers in Albany to change state education law to eliminate the cap or award New York’s mayor the power to grant charters without review by the Regents would not be simple, but he said Mr. Bloomberg’s announcement is a good first step. “You have a very high-profile mayor putting this on the table,” Mr. Murphy said. “That’s a good thing. That moves it forward.”

The CEO of the New York City Center for Charter School Excellence, Paula Gavin, called lifting the cap “essential” and said, “He has responded proactively to the numerous educators, entrepreneurs, and community groups who have expressed interest in opening high-quality charter schools in many of the city’s underserved communities.”

A state senator who has proposed legislation that would lift the cap, Mar tin Golden, said Mr. Bloomberg’s plan would help provide families with better educational options: “I think this is just another step that allows for the educational system to be more equitable and to allow for some competition.”

Even those who have been skeptical of charter schools in the past said they were open to some of the ideas Mr. Bloomberg advanced yesterday.

As recently as last spring, the chairman of the Assembly’s Education Committee, Steven Sanders, said it was premature to talk about lifting the cap on charter schools.

Yesterday, he said, “Raising the cap for charter schools in New York City is one that the Legislature will look at seriously.” He also said it would be “reasonable” for the Legislature to “look at New York City separately” in the discussion of new charter schools, as the city is more interested than others in the state in creating charter schools.

Still, he said, it’s “very doubtful” that the Legislature would eliminate the cap altogether, and he said Mr. Bloomberg’s call for New York’s mayor to get sole authorization power is “very unlikely” to find support in Albany.

He said, “I’m very doubtful that we would change the charter law in such a way that circumvented the authority that the State Education Department and the Board of Regents maintain over public charter schools in New York State.”

Mr. Bloomberg’s Democratic opponent, Fernando Ferrer, has been open to charter schools in the past. Yesterday, his representatives did not return multiple requests for comment on the Bloomberg proposal.