Talk about a slam dunk. A recent report from the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst's Office recommends that lawmakers remove the current cap of 750 on the number of charter schools, streamline charter funding and permit greater latitude in charter oversight.

"Assessing California's Charter Schools" comes in the wake of two state-sponsored examinations of these schools that were authorized by the Legislature a dozen years ago. Charters, which flow from the sensible premise that some public schools need more freedom to excel, have been very successful, for the most part, in California. No surprise there since charters are free from many of the bureaucratic constraints that hobble public schools.

A study last year by the Santa Monica-based RAND Corp., concluded that start-up charter schools generally outperform their conventional public counterparts. This is particularly impressive because the survey also showed that charters serve a greater percentage of low-income students as well as more students with academic problems than do public schools.

RAND's study dovetails with those from the Hoover Institution at Stanford and the School of Education at California State University Los Angeles, which show that student achievement in charters is improving at a greater rate than in traditional public schools.

This is not to suggest that all charter schools are bastions of educational excellence. To the contrary, some have proved to be shams and certainly deserved to be shut down. But the charter movement is growing because more and more parents are coming to understand that these innovative schools provide a healthy alternative to the one-size-fits-all mindset that pervades far too many public schools.