ABSTRACT
The chapter describes charter schools in Arizona, a state that provides the most promising laboratory currently available. Charter schools are public schools that have been freed of many state restrictions, are independent of traditional local school districts, and actually compete for students with traditional public schools. Although charter schools exist in more than half of the states, Arizona contains nearly one out of every four charter schools in the nation, and nearly one of four Arizona public schools is now a charter school. The Center for Education Reform, a national school choice advocacy group and research center, ranks Arizona first in the nation for the expansiveness of its charter school law. A final contrast between Arizona charter schools and public magnet schools is that when charter schools lose students they are not buffered from the impact of market forces. The chapter also presents an overview on the key concepts discussed in this book.
