Though I've seen a few charter schools to which I would not send children I care for, and some that are teaching things I don't agree with, the great majority are salubrious educational environments despite often-minimal facilities and lean budgets. If the promised results are produced, the school gets its charter renewed. If the managers fail to do what they pledged, the school does not continue. This degree of accountability is absent from conventional public schools, of course, as is the risk of a school perishing because it does not satisfy its customers. Nobody, after all, is obliged to attend a charter school.
Charter schools are mostly about teaching, learning and educational results.
But they have to behave in other ways, too. A charter manager may not run off with the school's money, for example, nor engage in criminal behavior, nor endanger the safety and health of pupils, nor violate civil rights protections. A typical charter runs for five years. Reasons vary from financial irregularities to fire code violations to power struggles over the school's autonomy. Running a successful charter school is an exhausting challenge.