The Texas example illustrates the challenge faced by today's charter movement: how to meet growing demand while maintaining quality. Its considerable progress is sometimes obscured by headlines about the few schools at the top that generate enormous excitement and world-class achievement and the few at the bottom that use their autonomy for unwise…

This report traces the origins, evolution and impact of Minnesota's pioneering charter school law--on its own schools, students, and communities and on the development of charter laws in many other states. It notes that, unlike what is now happening elsewhere, new schools are now being chartered at an accelerating pace in Minnesota. And because…