The first charter school opened in St. Paul, Minn., in September 1992. All told, there are some 800 charter schools up and running nationwide. Charter schools are public schools in every sense. They are financed with public dollars, must accept students on a nondiscriminatory basis, and are fully accountable to public oversight. Schools are subject to financial audits and academic monitoring.
Charters are subject to review and renewal.
Charter schools are different from traditional public schools in that they are free of most state and local mandates that apply to school districts, independent of the local school district bureaucracy, and autonomous from a legal and budgetary perspective. Funding follows the student to the charter school, but the bureaucracy does not. Charter schools would be free from such costly requirements as the Wicks Law, which drives up construction costs and has long been opposed by local government leaders. Charter organizers could negotiate a contract for the new charter school that might differ from the local public school contract in terms of work rules or salary ranges, including the possibility of implementing merit pay if desired. This aspect is crucial to the charter school model.