Confirming the findings reported above, these data suggest that newly created schools face greater obstacles in all areas except union and bargaining unit difficulties. The difference is most striking in terms of resource limitations, with 80 percent of newly created schools facing resource obstacles, while 61 percent of pre-existing schools faced these problems. Pre-existing schools, some of which were part of a district's collective bargaining unit, were more likely to report facing difficulties with union resistance, bargaining agreements, or teacher certification requirements. Schools that opened during the 1994-95 school year faced greater difficulties both in terms of political resistance and union relationships than schools opening in other school years, suggesting again that many of these schools were affected by an affiliation with the district and its collective bargaining laws. Schools that opened during the 1995-96 school year were more likely to be newly created schools and therefore were more likely to face resource limitations.
Most charter schools face challenges during their development, start-up and implementation.
Schools opening in later years have somewhat different patterns of difficulties from schools started earlier and newly created schools and pre-existing schools have different patterns as well. Lack of start-up funding was cited as a difficult or very difficult barrier by 58 percent of all charter schools. Inadequate operating funds, cited by 41 percent of charter schools, was the second most commonly reported difficulty for charter schools. These difficulties ranked as first and second, respectively, for charter schools opened in every year and for newly created and pre-existing schools. Newly created schools face different implementation problems than do pre-existing schools.