Some of you might have better things to do with your time. Not me. I sat spellbound during last night’s Democratic debate. Beyond the obvious lesson that we need some adult supervision of these events, another point bugged me: The candidates were not shy about calling Bloomberg a flat-out racist. Yet they gave him a pass when he waffled about charter schools.

They nailed him on stop-and-frisk. Why give him a pass on charter school policy?

At the Washington Post this morning, I offer a few lessons from the archives. I think history gives us a better way to evaluate charter schools, one that seems to fit with today’s Democratic vibe.