Charter School Myths and Realities:
Answering the Critics

The introduction of charter schools on the American education scene over the last five years has dramatically influenced education policy and school reform across the country. The charter concept, grounded in the two ideals of choice and accountability, has shaped both the dialog and activity surrounding reform. The nearly 500 charter schools that have opened their doors through the end of the 1996-97 school year, serving eager families, served by dedicated educators, have provided a laboratory in which those two concepts have been tested and proven successful and valuable to creating equitable and excellent education for children.

Despite the success of charter schools, or perhaps because of it, misconceptions abound about what charter schools are (and aren't), what they do (and don't do), and why they work (or, in a few isolated cases, don't).

This is due in part to the very nature of grassroots reform, where often community action takes precedence over informational outreach beyond the immediate stakeholders. Do-ers rather than talkers, charter advocates and operators dig in to get the job done, and let the results speak for themselves. Charter school organizers have been too busy with the rigorous task of educating children and managing schools to spend much time tooting their own horns.

However, some of the misunderstandings surrounding charter schools are due to the blatant misinformation campaigns that some have launched in an effort to protect their vested interest in the status quo. Some administrators, school board members, union leaders and others who feel threatened by the various implications of the charter concept have worked vigilantly to discredit and misrepresent both the intent and implementation of charters.

With five years of charter activity on record, however, the research data and analyses are now backing up what anecdotal evidence has indicated from the beginning: charter schools are a success for children, for educators and for American education. (See Chapter 4, "Successes," for more information.) Still, the myths persist, and distract from and obscure what should be most important aspect of any educational reform: the delivery of a solid education, founded in equity and excellence, to ensure a solid citizenry.

Educational Myths

Some of the most persistent and insidious myths surrounding charter schools are those that attack the educational intent and quality of charter schools. Critics accuse charter schools of lacking either rigor or integrity, or both, in their educational mission, as though the charter design is to establish posh "country club" schools where the select few can dabble and drift their way to a bogus graduation.

The Creaming Myth: Skeptics say charter schools will attract all the best students and most involved parents, and leave the rest of the public schools with the harder-to-educate students and parents who don't care.

Opponents contend that charter schools, as schools of choice, will appeal to the most successful students and families already highly involved in their children's education. The theory continues that this scholastic and social "cream" -- the stereotypical academically-achieving, well-behaved, white, upper-middle-class 'normal' children of two-parent PTA-member families -- will fill the charter school rosters. Having thus "abandoned" the traditional public school system, their elevating effect on the local schools will no longer be felt, and the local schools, left to educate the at-risk, minority, poor and poorly-achieving, will sink further into failure.

Charter schools refute this logic on two counts. First, they don't attract just the "golden" students. In fact, to the contrary, they serve a disproportionate number of students traditionally considered to be low-achieving or otherwise "at-risk." A study by the Phoenix based Goldwater Institute found that students attending Arizona's charter schools don’t necessarily represent the state's highest achievers; rather, fourth and seventh grade students entering charter school scored an average of 5 percent lower on standardized tests than the state average, while tenth grade charter school students scored an average of 12 percent lower.

Secondly, charter schools, unlike some traditional public school systems which try to blame their poor education results on the ethnic, social, educational or financial demographics of their students, successfully provide an atmosphere in which such students thrive and achieve. The downtown Boston, Massachusetts charter school City on a Hill is just one example. When City on a Hill first opened in September 1995, only 38% of its students were doing math at grade-level; a year later, the percentage rose to 58%. Similarly, 55% started out more than two years behind in reading; a year later, that dropped to 39%. 52% of the school's students qualify for the federal free or reduced lunch program. A study by the Pioneer Institute found that overall, 48% of Massachusetts's charter school students are minorities (more than double the state average of 21%); 39% qualify for the free lunch program (7% of Massachusetts families live in poverty); and 18 % speak a language other than English as their primary language (two-and-a-half times the state average of 7 %).

Recent surveys show that similar statistics can be seen in other charter school states. Three-quarters of Texas' charter students are minority. Minnesota's charter schools serve twice the percentage of limited-English-proficient students as their district counterparts.

When faced with such statistics, opponents are then apt to contend that even if charter students come from such "at-risk" backgrounds, the level of family involvement in their education is greater than that of their peers. Studies show that parental involvement, more than any other factor, has the most significant influence on a child's performance in school. However, charter schools do not "cream" off the students with the most involved and concerned parents. Rather, increased parental involvement becomes the RESULT of enrolling their child in a charter school, because charter schools encourage parental participation, and parents feel more welcomed and empowered to take a greater role in their child's education. The same Massachusetts study found that parental involvement nearly doubles when a parent transfers her child to a charter school.

The involvement extends beyond bake sales and the annual parents' night to participation in substantive governance, operational and educational aspects of the school. A study of Colorado's first charter schools found that nearly 65% were governed by boards comprised of a majority of parents. And across the country parents are logging tens of thousands of volunteer hours at their children's charter schools -- 11,400 at Academy Charter School in Castle Rock, Colorado, 19,000 hours to Santiago Middle School in Orange, California. From playground monitor to front office receptionist to cafeteria cook, they're investing sweat equity in schools they choose as the best opportunity for their children's education.

Charter school parents are more involved in their children's education, not necessarily because they started out that way, but perhaps because of the nature of charter schools as schools of choice. The act of choosing a charter school, rather than having the district assign a school, can be the first step in a parent's involvement in her child's education. And a charter school, without a guaranteed student body, may seek to ensure parental support by drawing them in to the activities and aspirations of the school from the outset, increasing their chances of success by increasing their parents' vested interest in it. One study of Arizona charters found that nearly one third of charter school teachers have contracts with parents. With parental involvement being a critical key to academic success, encouraging it is in everyone's best interest -- teacher, school and child.

The Exclusivity Myth, a Corollary to the Creaming Myth: critics argue that charter schools will actively exclude students with behavioral or academic problems, those from minority groups or low-income families, or those with other special needs.

Unlike many charter opponents who, claiming to want to protect the public school system, decry the possibility of "getting stuck with" the more-difficult-to-educate students after all the "good" students have been creamed off, many charter schools actually tailor their school to those students who are least successful in the traditional public school system.

Charter schools, just like all other public schools, are not permitted to discriminate on the basis of gender, race, ethnicity, religion or disability. Though a few states permit charters to operate like public magnet schools in that they may set specialty areas for enrollment or establish a curriculum focus, the overwhelming majority enroll any and all students who wish to attend, using a lottery to select students if the school is oversubscribed. Indeed, most charter schools are oversubscribed, and many have waiting lists as large or larger than their actual enrollment. Unlike regular public schools, all charter schools are schools of choice -- no student may be forced to attend because of where he or she lives. Thus charter schools exhibit a level of success just in filling all their seats. This is particularly noteworthy for those numerous charter schools that serve students who previously were not in school at all -- those who had chosen to drop out.

In fact, opposite of being exclusive, charter schools go out of their way to include and specifically target students who were not being well-served by their traditional public school system. Many charter school laws either encourage or explicitly require the development of schools that target such at-risk students -- from dropouts to pregnant and parenting teens to adjudicated youth. Eleven of Texas' 20 approved charters expressly serve at-risk students; as a result 72% of the state's charter school enrollment is designated "at-risk," compared to 39% for the entire state. 35% of Arizona's charter schools serve at-risk students. A 1995 study found that half of the nation's charter schools were designed to serve "at-risk" students.

The Hudson Institute found that charter schools across the country average 63% minority enrollment. In California, for instance, Garfield Elementary School serves a primarily Hispanic neighborhood in Redwood City concerned with improving its children's academic foundation. The Oakland Charter Academy helps the community's Latino children make the transition from Spanish to English instruction in a safe environment. The American Indian Charter School, in another neighborhood of Oakland, serves Native American children who often did not do well in a traditional public school setting. Overall, California charter schools enroll 53% minority students, as well as large numbers of students from low-income families.

In Texas, SER-NINOS in Houston enrolls 154 students, 88% of whom are Hispanic, 84% limited English proficient, and 90% at-risk. Overall, Texas charter schools' enrollment is majority minority: 26% African-American (state average is 14%); 52% Hispanic (state average is 36%); and 19% white (state average is 47%). (Texas charter teachers have similarly disproportionate minority backgrounds compared to state averages.) In Minnesota, charter schools enroll nearly three times the percentage of minorities as their host districts.

Schools like Metro Deaf in St. Paul, Minnesota, and The APPLE School in Lakeland, Florida, (with an enrollment of 85% ADD / ADHD students, 16% of whom also have additional disabilities) actively reach out to the special education student population. A study by the Hudson Institute found that 19% of the students in charter schools they surveyed had disabilities or impediments that affect their education. The study concluded, "Contrary to some forecasts, charter schools are serving proportionately more disabled youngsters than are conventional schools. Many disabled youngsters in charter schools are being educated in ways that do not conform to the formal procedures and classifications of U.S. special education, yet such children appear to be well-served, and they and their parents are pleased."

In fact, charter schools often work to reduce their special education rolls not by excluding such students, but by working intensively with them within the regular classroom setting. They take all students, but resist the ever-growing district practice of labeling all difficult or low-achieving children as "special education" just in an effort to get them out of the regular classroom or pick up additional special-ed funds. As a result, the number of special education students some charter schools serve may actually seem less than a traditional public school's, inviting the charge that they're exclusionary.

Says Eric Premack, of the Charter Schools Project, Institute for Education Reform at California State University in Sacramento, "Many charter school operators have lowered class sizes and work closely with teachers to try to avoid unnecessary referrals and placements for kids with emotional difficulties and the like. These schools bristle at the comparisons between their percentage of special education kids and the district's percentage. They argue that they should be commended for their low percentages and for working to meet the needs of kids without costly and perhaps unnecessary referrals. And they object to school districts skimming funds from their revenues to subsidize the district's high level of special education expenditures in the name of 'fair share.’ …Poorly drafted legislation too often leaves charter schools in a severely compromised position when attempting to meet the needs of special needs kids by making the charter school responsible for meeting special education needs but not providing a fair share of the needed funding."

Six of Texas' 17 operating charter schools provide dropout recovery programs, and maintain, with this hard-to-reach student population, an attendance rate of 84 percent. In Arizona, a survey of charter school teachers found that nearly half taught students who had not previously been in school, the majority of whom had been forced to leave or had left voluntarily for a school designed for "at-risk" students. Schools like Options for Youth (three locations in California), Community Prep School in Colorado Springs (CO), City Academy in St. Paul (MN) and Affiliate Alternatives in Madison (WI) are just a few examples of the charter schools that provide successful dropout retrieval programs. The Hudson study found that 4% of charter school students nationwide had previously dropped out of the system.

The Lack of Learning Myth: opponents contend that students attending a charter school are descending into an academic black hole, in which there is no guarantee that they will receive either a suitable or quality education.

Perhaps realizing that charter schools ARE reaching out to underserved students, some critics are now pushing the reverse argument, objecting to charters on the grounds that they will become a "dumping ground" for the academically underprivileged.

The assumption of course is that traditional public schools already provide uniform, quality education to our children. Unfortunately, examples to the contrary abound. The entire state of California undermined the reading acquisition of its elementary school students when 'whole language' was promoted at the expense of phonics. Bill Honig, the state superintendent at the time of the policy's implementation, has since denounced it and the resulting lack of literacy among the state's grade schoolers as a "very sick situation." In the wake of the 80's policy, California students' reading scores dropped to a tie with Louisiana's as the absolute worst among 39 states tested. Some California charters like Fenton Avenue Charter School and Vaughn Next Century Learning Center have taken the problem in hand by converting to charter status, and are successfully reversing the trend.

In Colorado, charter schools using E.D. Hirsch's Core Knowledge curriculum have registered academic success with outstanding test scores and state recognition. In Massachusetts, parents report that charter schools provide their children with "excellent" academic motivation, and students rate their charter schools' standards as "high" and "very high." Sarah Kass, teacher, founder and principal of City on a Hill in Boston, describes the school's first-year academic experience: "We expected students to be able to write a well-organized and interesting paragraph, read literature from the ninth-grade curriculum and the newspaper with understanding, give a prepared two-minute speech, apply basic scientific concepts, basic mathematical tools, and algebraic thinking, and conduct a basic conversation in Spanish…. At the end of one year, 44 percent of students were reading at grade level; 55 percent of students could write a good paragraph. These numbers indicate that we have a ways to go; but considering that only 28 percent of our entering students could read at grade level, they are all making progress."

Charter schools, unlike traditional public schools, are academically accountable on two counts. First, they must declare at the outset what their academic goals will be. In order for their charter to be granted, the charter granting body must determine that those goals are sound and rigorous, and can be objectively assessed. In order for their charter to be sustained and renewed, they must meet or exceed those goals. They can not open unless their academic goals are approved; they cannot remain open unless their academic goals are met. Public schools, by contrast, are generally opened or closed based on the demographic developments of the community, without regard for academic delivery. Indeed, getting any sort of public, measurable account of the local schools' academic delivery can be difficult if not impossible. By contrast, in the short time that charter schools have been in operation, at least a dozen, in California, Minnesota and Colorado, have already successfully gone through the renewal process, having evidenced significant compliance with the goals of their charter.

Secondly, charters are schools of choice: families must elect to enroll their children, and can remove them at their own discretion as well. In most public schools, a parent who feels the school is not properly educating her child, and has not been responsive to such concerns, has little recourse except to continue to appeal to the school and district to change things. The district school feels little or no impact on its operations whether it delivers a solid education or not. In a charter school, on the other hand, if a child is failing to learn, a parent can remove him or her from the school, along with the child's public education funds, without explanation or apology. A charter school that neglects its academic duties will soon find that its enrollment has dwindled, as well as its budget accordingly, and it will be forced to shape up to maintain enrollment and budget. If it does not or can not, it will have to close its doors. Such closures have not been the case in the growing charter community, however. Parents are flocking to enroll their children in charter schools (enrollment to oversubscribed charter schools is generally determined by lottery), and reenroll them year after year. The number of students and families on waiting list at many charters equals or exceeds actual enrollment.

One charter opponent who was aware of the academic successes of charter schools -- even, and especially, with those who traditionally have been least successful in the public schools -- has cynically managed to skewer even that success as a negative outcome. The New Jersey school board member, attacking a proposed charter school conversion, presumably objected to subjecting students to high academic standards and rigorous outcome objectives, challenging, "Who's going to collect your garbage?"

Systemic Myths

Perhaps even more popular than myths about charter schools concerned with the educational rights and well-being of children are those concerned with the 'rights' and 'well-being' of the system. Critics attack charter school up-starts on the grounds that they're bad for business -- the traditional multi-billion dollar district public school business, that is. Their concern is not with the quality and advancement of education, but rather with the preservation of the existing fiefdom that controls the choices and achievements of 2.6 million public school educators and the families of 45 million public school students and pulls the purse strings of $250 billion dollars in federal, state and local tax dollars.

Unaccountable and Unregulated Myth: critics contend that charter schools, when cut free of district bureaucracy and onerous state regulations, will operate without regard for business ethics, educational integrity, social conscience or common good sense.

Charter opponents conjure up visions of charlatans, incompetents and subversives creating schools that will operate in chaos beyond the paternal arm of the local school board and state education code. They contend that such charter schools are playing fast and loose with public dollars without having to answer to taxpayers. Despite irresponsibly outlandish statements, like Alex Molnar's to the National PTA that the only criteria one needs for starting a charter school is an ability "to fog on glass," charter schools operate under the most complete and rigorous system of accountability at work in the public school system today.

Charter schools, like any organization, public or private, must operate within the provisions of state and federal law. They must abide by health, safety and civil rights laws, and cannot discriminate on the basis of race, color, sex or national origin. Charter employees are subject to background checks to uncover any criminal activity or financial improprieties. Charter governance bodies are subject to various business regulations, such as ethical financial practices, and public body rules, such as opening meeting laws. From state to state, charter schools must abide by scores of other rules and regulations to open and operate -- in some cases, more than their district counterparts. In Massachusetts, for instance, where charters receive no automatic waivers from education code, they must abide by all the rules that apply to the general public school system, as well as additional regulations set forth in the charter law. In every charter state, charter schools that violate the law are shut down.

In addition to abiding by the letter and the spirit of the law, charter schools must also abide by the provisions of their own charter, as approved and monitored by their sponsoring body. In every charter school state, charter applicants go through a rigorous application and approval process. According to Martha Fraser-Harmond, Deputy Superintendent of the Arizona State Superintendent's Office, charter applicants are subjected to tremendous scrutiny, including credit and criminal background checks, applications are reviewed on everything from curriculum to hiring practices, and once approved, charter schools operate under the strict oversight of the Auditor General, and ultimately undergo more monitoring than traditional public schools.

Charter schools must submit annual reports to their parents and community, their sponsoring body and the state, detailing their compliance with the charter under which they operate. Furthermore, charter schools, as schools of choice, must meet at all times the high standards of parents seeking out the best for their children. And as the educational new kid on the block, they operate under the constant scrutiny of the media and public opinion, with skeptics and opponents ever ready to expose any failure or malfeasance. Charter schools that violate or fail to abide by the ethics of business or the highest educational standards will close or be closed.

Critics contend that charter schools can and will hire unqualified people to teach in their classrooms, presumably in the interest of saving money on teacher salaries. By unqualified, they generally mean uncertified. Charter school laws vary from state to state on their requirement of teacher certification, and many charter schools do employ uncertified teachers (just as do many districts, under emergency certification provisions). However, teacher certification does not guarantee competence in the classroom. In fact, the late Al Shanker, as head of the American Federation of Teachers and champion of high standards, dismissed teacher certification tests as "minimum competency exams." Teacher certification too often means merely that a person has graduated from a teacher education program -- as likely as not one of the lucrative diploma mills referred to by Linda Darling-Hammond, co-director of the National Center for Restructuring Education, Schools, and Teaching at Teachers College, Columbia University as "cash cows."

Although requiring that charter school teachers be certified would not guarantee that those teachers would be of good quality, it would guarantee that a number of highly qualified potential teachers would not be eligible to work in a charter classroom. It would block the hiring of the uncredentialed parent with a Stanford math Ph.D. who teaches at California's San Carlos Learning Center. Regardless of certification, charter schools are attracting excellent teachers looking to expand their professional opportunities. In Arizona, the majority of charter applicants are educators. In Massachusetts, one charter received 350 applications for three staff positions. 80% of the charter school teachers in the state are certified, and 50% have a Masters degree or higher. From state to charter state, charter teachers, like their district school peers, must undergo criminal background checks. Charter schools that do not employ responsible teachers and deliver quality education will loose their enrollment and the funding that follows it, forcing them to close.

Charter schools are regulated and renewable; they are the only public schools that can be summarily closed down, and must be pro-active in their efforts to stay open. Each year they must verify their fiscal stability, the educational achievement of their students, and their overall viability as a school of choice. Unlike district schools which open their doors year after year regardless of financial or academic health, charter schools operate under a stringent, two-pronged code of accountability: they can be closed quickly for violations of the law or their charter; and they are subject to the demands of the marketplace -- they have to deliver the educational goods, or they will lose their students and their funding, and be forced to shut their doors.

The Highway Robbery Myth: critics charge that charter schools take support and resources away from other public schools.

Charter critics talk about charter schools "stealing" resources, "siphoning off" funds, and "abandoning" public schools.

First and foremost, charter schools ARE public schools and they operate in the interest of public school students. They use funds and other resources intended, and designated by the tax-paying public, for educating students. It is the students', and the tax-payers', right to see those resources used in the most responsible and effective means possible, to provide an equitable and excellent education to the next generation of tax-payers. Efforts to control such funds for the sole purpose of maintaining the fiscal status quo, in the name of a public school "system," runs counter to the best interests of the community and of students. In most cases, charter schools do not even receive an equitable amount of funding to launch and run this new breed of academically and fiscally accountable schools. For instance, New Jersey's charter school funding system is such that charters that want to open their doors in Newark will have to do so at 75% of the district's per-pupil funding. In Arizona, charter school students are funded at approximately 20 percent less than traditional public school students. And according to the Hudson Institute, most charter schools don't receive their "share" of federal categorical aid either. Nevertheless, charter schools are succeeding, on a shoestring.

Second, school districts confident of their educational delivery have nothing to fear from charter schools. They will impose no more of a financial impact on an academically sound district than do the normal demographic shifts to which any community is subject. In fact, a number of superintendents and school boards have reported a positive impact on their district as a result of the charter opportunity, not only by bringing a new level academic excellence and innovation, or serving 'lost' students, but by encouraging a renewed push for fiscal efficiency and responsibility. For the San Diego City Unified School District employee services, "Charter schools are our best customers…. We know that if we can't do it better and cheaper, they’ll go somewhere else."

Some districts, including Cartersville in Georgia, and Pioneer Union Elementary School District in California, have chosen to convert all of their schools to charter status in the interest of designing and delivering even better educational services to their constituents. Others have found that the reality, or even the specter, of competition from charter schools has spurred them to implement innovations and improvements within the district system. In Colorado, the great success of a number of Core Knowledge charter schools has lead district schools to implement their own Core Knowledge programs to address the growing demand sparked by the charters, and one district even tried, unsuccessfully, to convince a Core Knowledge school to give up its charter status and become part of the district school system.

Third, in many instances, not only have charter schools not imposed a negative financial impact on district schools but instead have actually brought them a windfall. In Massachusetts, state aid has increased on a per-pupil basis in every district in which charter schools are located; from FY 1995 to FY 1996 state aid in the 11 districts in which charter schools are located grew by $39.8 million, an 11% increase. In Pennsylvania, districts can apply for "temporary transitional funding" to compensate for any students they lose to charter schools. In Minnesota, charter school students are funded solely by the state; in Louisiana, state-approved charter schools receive no district funding.

The Masked Marauder Myth: in this, a corollary to Highway Robbery Myth, opponents contend that support of charter schools shows a callous lack of support for public schools, and is in fact a blatant attempt to undermine and destroy public schools.

The concern of opponents, who see charter schools as the nemesis of public schools (notwithstanding the fact that charter schools ARE public schools), is not with the demise of a solid education for students, nor even with the closure of a poorly performing district school at the hands of charter school competition, but with the demolition of a public school system in which the existing power structures, both political and financial, are solidly entrenched. They are justifiably concerned: charter schools, merely by providing an alternative for educators and families, place the educational power back into the hands of those with the most personal vested interest, parents, students and teachers.

Teachers, confident that they can build a better school, are breaking free of the district system to start charter schools, and parents are indeed beating a path to their door. But the uppermost concern of both is not for the systemic welfare of the establishment, either preserving or dismantling it, but for the academic wellbeing of each of their student charges. But it is just such concern, and competition, that will shore up the public school system by making it easier to weed out dysfunctional public schools and spur good schools to greater excellence. When parents and teachers have a choice in the education of students, they will choose quality, and when they can choose, schools will work harder to become those quality schools of choice.

In Boston, for example, a handful of "pilot" schools have sprung up in response to the passage of charter legislation there -- even before any charter schools had opened their doors, district officials and union leaders were quick to match the prospect of competing schools of choice by opening their own. Recently the Houston, Texas, school board approved over a dozen "contract schools" to open within the district this fall -- in the wake of the successful launch in the area of six state-sponsored schools in Fall 1996, enrolling nearly 1,000 students, and taking them, and their education dollars, beyond the jurisdiction of the district.

A Fly in the Eye of an Elephant: Critics argue that charters don't lead to innovation and are only a distraction and a diversion from the real system-sponsored and -driven reform that's already taking place.

Charter opponents argue that education reform should come from within the system, from those who know the system best. Others, however, say that too much of what passes for systemic reform at the behest of the establishment amounts to nothing more than 'rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.’ Charter opponents further argue that reforms should only be implemented when they can be done so system-wide, in the interest of equity. Again, others would counter that 'just because there aren't enough lifeboats, that shouldn't mean everyone has to go down with the ship.'

While not every public school is a sinking ship, charter schools have indeed offered a life-ring to many students who were foundering in their traditional school setting. Whether through the implementation of new best practices like the Core Knowledge Curriculum or community-based learning, or a return to tried-and-true methods like direct instruction or uniforms and conduct codes, charter schools are succeeding with students and achieving high levels of satisfaction, and involvement, from parents. Teachers are flocking to charters as a means to developing their own professional potential and to implementing their own insights to improve the educational process.

Charter schools allow for more immediate implementation of successful curriculums, innovative policies and rigorous management systems. And they allow for swifter eradication of those pedagogical, policy or management systems that aren't working. And they do so in the interest of providing children, educators, families and the community with the high quality education they deserve and want. But ultimately, the measure of success for charter schools is not the bounds, or boundlessness, or their innovation, but the education of their students.

When the myths, misconceptions and misinformation are set aside, a picture of a young yet thriving new school movement emerges. The charter school movement is bringing hundreds of thousands of families, educators, and community leaders off the sidelines and back into the center of the action, not just to cheer on this new embodiment of the democratic educational system our forefathers envisioned, but to shape and guide it.

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This analysis is excerpted from The Center for Education Reform's Charter School Workbook: Your Roadmap to the Charter School Movement, "Chapter 5: Obstacles." Endnotes are not included in this electronic version.

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