ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author discusses the growth of charter schools in her home county of Durham, North Carolina, and illustrates the challenges that arise in protecting the public interest with this form of self-governance and parental choice. A major argument for self-governing schools is that school personnel are in a better position to understand and respond to the needs of their students than are more distant policymakers at the district or the state level. The goal of providing greater choice of school for parents also logically leads to a symbiotic relationship between choice and self-governing schools. The tension between the private and public interests in education are not unique to the US but arise in many countries in a variety of forms. Another public or collective interest takes a different form. Although it is individuals who have interests, such interests become collective when they are shared.
