Charter school advocates and critics went head to head Thursday at a packed hearing in Downtown Manhattan.

Hundreds of parents, union leaders and officials turned up for the State Senate committee meeting, which lasted for more than seven hours.

State Senator Bill Perkins testified that he's concerned that charter schools don't face enough oversight from the city or state.

"The taxpayers and more importantly our children and parents deserve a charter education free from fraud, abuse and self dealing," Perkins said. With this in mind, I plan to introduce legislation that would incorporate what I believe are the best practices in charter and management company governance."

"They wanna take over public school space and they wanna replace public schools. They revel in stories about beating the public schools, not helping them," said education historian Diane Ravitch.

Supporters argue it's that very freedom from bureaucratic regulation that usually ties down traditional public schools, allowing charters to deliver higher test scores and graduation rates.

"Children after all do not attend a governance structure, they do not attend a management structure. They do not care whether their school is operated by a community school district or a not-for-profit organization. Their view of school is shaped by their experience each day working with teachers in classrooms," said John White of the Department of Education.

Meanwhile, charter school parents themselves are divided over whether the schools need more regulation or not.

"At first I started off a big charter school supporter -- and I still kinda am. It's just that I'm having issues with my child and her school, Girls Prep. In recent situations, my child displayed more behavior issues. The relationship with the school has went into a tense one," said one charter school parent.

"As you can see by the crowd out here, people in the charter school community wanna make sure that the lynch mob that's upstairs saying all these terrible things about charter schools, we wanna be able to balance that conversation by letting people know the good things that charter schools do," said another.

The state has almost 200 charter schools in operation -- the maximum amount allowed under current state law.

With legislation in the works to raise the charter cap, the decision on whether to include more regulation in their day to day operations remains to be seen.