Gates Charters A New Cause

Charter schools have a new best friend - Bill Gates.

The co-chair of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which has donated more than $2 billion to educational causes in the last nine years, touted charters yesterday as his new focus for reform.

"One of the key things these schools have done is help their teachers be more effective," Gates wrote in a letter.

This signals a shift from his push to create small high schools, a cause for which he's given New York City more than $51 million.

Gates called for eliminating state caps on charter schools, including New York's limit of 200, and for increasing their funding.

Advocates welcomed the news.

"If you look at the evidence and ignore the politics, it leads you to conclude the best schools are charter schools, which is, not surprisingly, what Bill Gates has himself concluded," said James Merriman, CEO of the New York Center for Charter School Excellence.