We've seen some disquieting signs in state capitols. More than one legislator well-disposed to charters has remarked that it didn't take long for the charter operators in his state to transform from education revolutionaries into their own interest group. This young movement tends to raid its own membership for talent rather than growing more of it. A Cloudy Horizon Surmounting these 12 challenges would place the charter idea, and the schools it inspires, at the center of the American education reform movement. This last point is especially relevant today.
Charter school are classic Tocquevillian communities, based on shared interests and purposes.
They have a clear mission and a common purpose. They bring people together to work on a problem, to achieve a set of objectives, and to create a set of norms and a moral order by which those objectives can be achieved. Little of this can be said of today's typical public schools. Moreover, charter schools restore to education a measure of local control, community involvement, and parent participation. They are manifestations of the principle that problems should be solved as close to home as possible.