Activist Michelle Rhee tells Leonard Lopate about her turbulent tenure as chancellor of the Washington, D.C., public schools, her current work as an education activist, and her years of teaching in inner-city Baltimore.

New Jersey's largest teacher's union has gone to court to close a Newark charter school where students spend hours each day in front of a computer screen.

Carol Reich and Joe Reich talk about their role in the education reform movement. Getting to Bartlett Street: Our 25-Year Quest to Level the Playing Field in Education is the story of how they started one of the first charter schools in the country in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.

Beth Fertig, WNYC's education reporter and contributor to SchoolBook, talks about her series on the issues surrounding charter schools, including attrition rates and locations.

30 Issues in 30 Days is our election year series on the important issues facing the country this election year. Today: Comparing the candidates' public education policies, from kindergarten through high school. Visit the 30 Issue home page for all the conversations.

As students continue to sign up for New Jersey’s first experiments with online charter schools, one leading legislator is asking the state to slow down.

In some states, parents frustrated with the public school system may have a new tool to fix their child’s education. Parent trigger laws, passed in some form in four states already, give dissatisfied parents the power to fire teachers, convert a public school to a charter, or even shut down the school altogether. As one can imagine, such a dramatic solution to the problem of public education has created quite a controversy. Parents and educators alike are asking: should parents have their fingers on the trigger of public education?

The campaign is heating up to stop the city from phasing out — or partially closing — 25 struggling schools. Public hearings are being held at 10 of the schools this week with Department of Education officials.

The city has put a troubled Brooklyn charter school on probation. The operators of Williamsburg Charter High School have been told to end a contract with their charter management company, the Believe Network, because they didn't get approval first from the city.

The newly appointed New York City Schools Chancellor Dennis Walcott said he believes school options should include charter schools. He called for a tapering of the rhetoric around whether charter schools or regular public schools need to be expanded.

A panel controlled by mayoral appointees voted to close 10 low-performing schools Tuesday night following a raucous public hearing that pushed beyond midnight. What should happen to struggling schools? Take our poll.

The debate over the role of charter schools in education reform isn’t just academic. New York’s decision to allow more charter schools played a critical role in the state winning its $700 million federal Race to the Top award. Now, charters have become a political issue in a Harlem State Senate campaign.

Perkins, an early Obama supporter, not a big fan of charter schools. (Perkins' campaign web site)

Basil Smikle, the Democratic challenger to State Senator Bill Perkins, was on the defensive for a good chunk of their debate last night on NY1.

Smikle's challenge to Perkins is fueled in no small part because of the issue of charter schools: Smikle supports them; Perkins, for the most part, opposes them (although he did vote to raise the cap on them after changes to the law governing them were made).

Supporters for Smikle and Perkins line up pretty cleanly based on the education issue: charter school supporters are behind Smikle; public school advocates support Perkins.

Anyway, during the debate, Smikle - a political consultant running as a candidate for the first time - was on the defensive about who supports him.

“It’s insane to think the [New York] Post would urge me to run for political office. To put my life on the line, to open myself up," Smikle said at one point. The New York Post has waged a fairly intense campaign in favor of charter schools, and has given plenty of critical coverage to Perkins.

Smikle also sought to distance himself from Mayor Bloomberg, whom he worked for last year, and is an outspoken charter school supporter.

"I am not close to the mayor. I worked with him for one year. I’m actually a lot closer to the Clintons than I am to the mayor. I worked with them a lot longer," said Smikle.

Needless to say, the Clintons are much more popular in the Harlem and Morning Side Heights parts of the district. (The district also includes the Upper West Side - where I'd love to see polling numbers for Bloomberg and the Clintons.)

Later in the debate, Perkins took a swipe at Smikle for taking money from "hedge fund" managers who, as stories in The Times and elsewhere pointed out, often bankroll charter school efforts.

Smikle had an interesting response: associate those donors with Obama, a popular figure throughout the district.

"Now, in terms of those who have donated who are in the financial industry, what’s interesting about those individuals is that the majority of them actually donated to Obama very early on in his campaign because they supported his position on education and on school choice," said Smikle. Those donors to Obama, says Smikle, are giving to his campaign, not Perkins.

Obama is a supporter of charter schools, and is, some say, helping realigning the Democratic Party on this issue.

But Smikle's attempt to latch onto Obama's coattails is interesting for other reasons too. Smikle worked for Hillary Clinton who, famously, ran against Obama in the 2008 presidential primary. Also, the first elected official in New York CIty to endorse Obama was a State Senator by the name of...Bill Perkins.

Another team of researchers at Stanford University has released a study finding students in New York City charter schools outperform their peers in regular public schools.

The study was conducted by the Center for Research on Education Outcomes. It looked at 49 charter schools in New York City and compared their students to "virtual twins," or kids in the regular public schools who were demographically and academically identical to those in the charters. This way they could see if charters had any effect on learning.

In 51 percent of the schools, students in charters had gains on their state math exams that were statistically larger than kids in regular public schools. In a third of the schools there was no statistical difference, and in 16 percent the students showed lower levels of learning in math.

The gains in reading weren't as large, but they were still impressive to the Stanford team. The study found 29 percent of charter schools showed statistically better gains on state exams, while 59 percent showed no significant difference, and 12 percent scored significantly lower.

If those numbers cause your eyes to blur here's another way of looking at it. Margaret Raymond, who directs the Center for Research on Education Outcomes at Stanford, says the gains were especially striking over a three-year period.