Michigan's former governor, John Engler, was naturally attracted to charter schools. He had seen for too long how school districts treated students as their property and the state as an endless funding source, and he wanted that to change. Engler saw the chartering strategy as a politically viable means for gaining leverage over school districts and other interests that he felt were not serious about improving education. He believed that chartering could foster choice and competition within public education. And, as in the business world, he hoped the creation of an education marketplace would provide compelling incentives for schools to continuously improve or risk being put out of business. A key step in establishing a charter-school sector is identifying the institutions that can authorize would-be founders to create these new public schools and grant them charters. Authorizers are charged with evaluating charter applicants, awarding and overseeing charter contracts, assessing whether the school is improving student achievement and fulfilling the goals in its charter contract, renewing charter contracts for schools that perform, and closing schools that do not. Engler figured that for the chartering strategy to work in Michigan, he could not "just put authorizing in the hands of traditional school districts." Charter school authorizers should be outside the control of the traditional K-12 system. Engler designed Michigan's charter-school law to allow community colleges and the state's 15 public universities to authorize charter schools, along with school districts. He signed Michigan's charter-school law into effect on January 14, 1994, and in August of that year, Central Michigan University (CMU) became the first university in the nation to authorize a charter school. (Contains 1 figure.)