ABSTRACT
Since the original charter school legislation was passed in 199 1 , enormous interest has been generated by the possibilities inherent in this network of more autonomous public schools. According to the U S . Department of Education’s Fourth Year Report of the National Study of Charter Schools (2000), 36 states and the District of Columbia have enacted charter school legislation. Thirty states already had charter schools in operation as of September 1999; yet a survey done by the Public Agenda Foundation that same year found that most people had only the vaguest notion of what the term charter school meant. This book takes the reader inside the fast-growing charter school movement, focusing on the unique manner in which charter schools draw on the resources of civil society in order to further the cause of educational reform.
