California has moved one step closer toward having public colleges and universities sponsor public charter schools. The Education Committee of the California Assembly approved AB 2764 by a 7-to-1 vote. That's the good news.

The bill now goes to the Higher Education Committee.

The bad news is that legislators watered down the bill, making college and university charters only a pilot program. Each campus would be limited to sponsoring just one charter school. The University of California, California State University and California Community College systems would each be limited to 20 charter schools.

This cap arbitrarily limits the state's potential for university charter school partnerships. And that limits the potential benefits that the state's schoolchildren can derive from these partnerships.

California's public colleges and universities already train most of the state's public school teachers. Creating new links between teaching colleges and charter schools would mark a sort of return to the public laboratory school tradition.

University-sponsored charter schools could provide a setting for creating, piloting and evaluating new curriculum materials and teaching strategies. They could provide valuable teaching experience for young teachers. They could give students opportunities to see college firsthand in their early years of public school education.

Several states - including New York, Minnesota, Michigan, Indiana and Wisconsin - already successfully allow colleges and universities to sponsor charter schools.

California ought to do the same. The Assembly Higher Education Committee should restore the original language allowing any UC, CSU or CCC campus to sponsor as many charters as they are capable of taking on.