"The Race to the Top is about doing more of what works for our children. Unfortunately, most of the proposed changes to the charter law, in addition to weakening the State's application for Federal money, would take us in the wrong direction. Independent research has shown that charters issued by SUNY and by the City's Department of Education, with Regents approval, dramatically outperform charters issued directly by the Regents—yet there’s talk of closing down those paths. Dean Kern, Director of the Charter Schools Program for the United States Department of Education, said in June 2009: ‘A couple of examples of high quality authorizers that are taken seriously, closing down low-performing schools...would be your [New York's] state university system, SUNY. They have done an incredible job of holding their charter schools accountable and closing those that are not demonstrating results.’
“We know that locating public charter schools in existing school buildings can make those buildings vital centers of learning once again—yet we are talking about making that impossible. In Harlem, we still have 3,000 students on charter waitlists—yet opponents would block the creation of new charters in that community. If we care about high-needs students and about creating good educational options for them, we need to rapidly change the direction of this conversation in time to pass a progressive bill on charter schools that protects what's already working so well and expands it."