Public charter schools straddle an uncertain divide -- with public money, they often serve targeted constituencies, from the consistently underserved to families looking for cultural connection and context. What the charters characterize as focus -- on a particular community, ideal of academic achievement, or on intellectual discipline -- critics see as exclusionary and discriminatory, and counter to the melting-pot theory of public education.

In a weekend Valentine to culture-based charter educationin Minnesota, Sara Rimer of the Times celebrates the ability of these specialized schools to serve the ethnic minorities whose children make up the student body. All well and good, says Rimer, as kids new to the U.S. gain in academics but keep a foundation in their home culture. But what's good for the country often doesn't square up as positive in New York City. Witness the firestorm over Khalil Gibran International Academy-- the city's first Arabic-language public school, which was forced out of its original placement, lost its founding principal and is scrambling now to gain a foothold in a remote location, near the Brooklyn Navy Yard. To describe the public response to KGIA as oppositional is to understate the force of gravity: Despite the presence of dozens of language-based city schools, this one inflamed the barely dormant spark of discrimination and anti-Muslim sentiment.

In today's Times, Elissa Gootman describes a new proposal for a Hebrew-language charter school, backed by financier Michael Steinhardt (among others) and the project of Steinhardt's daughter Sara Berman. Planned for the Midwood-Flatbush neighborhood of Brooklyn, great pains have been taken to separate the school's Hebrew studies -- language, culture, history, music, and arts -- from any formal religious instruction. Students of all races and ethnicities will be eligible to apply, if the proposal is approved this week by the New York State Regents. But the students that choose to attend the school may or may not reflect the surrounding, racially diverse community.

While some of the loudest KGIA naysayers are now silent, many critics question the charter school's ability to offer values-neutral instruction. But the proposal, from Gootman's report, seems rock-solid, and the school may well go forward.

The counterpoint of both stories leads to three big questions: First, why is it good for schools in the heartland to inculcate particular cultures, and not good in New York? And second, does a school that's highly focused on a language or a culture contradict a bedrock principle of public education -- to bring youngsters into the American culture even as they learn to read, write, and think? Can public schools do both, serve specific constituencies and serve the greater good?