State Senate Votes Today On Creating Charter Schools Backers Say They Will Make Public Schools Shape Up. Detractors Worry They Will Widen The Education Gap Between Rich And Poor.

When the Northfield, Minn., school superintendent, Charles Kyte, created a new option for middle school students by starting a school-within-a- school, he did so by emulating a charter school running out of a rural Minnesota storefront.

In Boston, public school officials worked out a contract with the teachers' union that allows for experimental "pilot schools" - a direct response, they acknowledge, to new charter schools in Massachusetts.

Some educators, politicians and parents who want to shake up America's public schools say the best way is to give parents more options for educating their children - options that pose a competitive challenge to the public system, forcing it to improve or lose students and money. Charter schools, some advocates say, are the most politically palatable way to generate that competition.

Gov. Whitman and some New Jersey legislators agree.

Today, the state Senate is set to vote on a bill that would allow charter schools in New Jersey - an idea that a dozen other states have already employed in efforts to improve public education.

(In Pennsylvania last week, Gov. Ridge shelved his education reform package, which includes vouchers and charter schools, for a lack of support in the state legislature.)

"It's an innovative way to give educators more flexibility in how they teach kids and take off some of the restraints put on by union pressures," said Sen. John H. Ewing (R., Somerset), the chairman of the Senate Education Committee and a bill sponsor. "Frankly, we've got to put the concerns of children first."

Many who study school reform say that charter schools provide the best opportunity for reform without draining money from public schools, the way vouchers do - another Whitman proposal yet to reach the legislature.

But charter schools have critics, too.

Some worry that charter schools would widen the gap in the quality of public education between wealthy suburbs and inner cities. They argue that the trend could create a cadre of publicly subsidized schools for wealthier students whose parents have the resources to start them, and the interest in their children's education to make sure their children get in.

California provided no start-up money for the 100 charter schools its legislation allowed, and, as a result, many more were created in wealthy communities than in poor urban ones, said Amy Stuart Wells, an associate professor of education policy at the University of California at Los Angeles.