ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the political and educational development of the charter school movement and presents information about the challenges and promises inherent in creating a charter school. It attempts to communicate some of the idiosyncrasies of the national charter school movement. The chapter shows an amalgamation of thirty-eight efforts—resulting in a decentralized and fragmented reform effort. Charter schools emerge from a consistent set of motivations—the desire to be free from bureaucracy, free to innovate without oversight, free to create unique educational environments—the charter school movement itself is quite fragmented. One of the promises of the charter movement was that as charter schools grew and succeeded, they would document and share their best practices with all schools, including neighboring traditional public schools. The charter movement is quite fragile—and is not likely to directly result in the kind of watershed change in the American public education system as its founders predicted and its champions assert.
