www.village-charter.org

photo © 2010 Christopher Michel | more info (via: Wylio)Education has always been a contested terrain in the United States and throughout its history parents have attempted to provide the best possible education to their children, whether through alternative schools, site-based management, privatization of the public education system or even home schooling. In one way or another all of these reform ideas have contributed to the charter school movement. But it was not until the late 1980s that some schools-within-schools, called “charters”, were founded in Philadelphia and a little later in Minnesota where charter schools were developed according to three basic values: opportunity, choice, and responsibility for results.

Minnesota was the first state to pass a charter school law in 1991, one year later California followed suit. Today, 41 states, Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia have charter school laws and the concept is gaining support across the country as numbers continue to increase year by year. Most importantly in our time and age, the support seems to be bipartisan, enabling changes unimaginable in other areas of society. Whether Clinton or Bush, Democrat or Republican, federal and state budgets for charter schools have continually been increased since the mid-1990s and today it seems completely possible that the model will become one of THE cornerstones of American education.

Source: www.uscharterschools.org