Mayor Cory A. Booker, a rising star in the Democratic Party nationally, has high hopes for the role education in general, and charters in particular, can play in efforts to revitalize this long-struggling city. He says that, eventually, he would like to see one-fourth of Newark's public school students attend high-performing charter schools. The mayor is not alone in seeing potential for his city's charter schools. Just last spring, several prominent national philanthropies announced plans to create a $20 million Newark Charter School Fund, aimed at helping to support and expand the small but growing charter sector. Stig Leschly, a partner at the Newark fund and its founder, said the city has a set of "fundamentals" that make it especially fertile terrain for developing a local charter sector of what he calls meaningful size and consistently high quality that not only would benefit Newark, but also could serve as a national model for the charter movement.