Charter choice: lawmakers are taking steps to ensure charter schools can continue to grow at a robust pace.

• Author: Weiss, Suzanne

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Capping a hard-fought struggle between charter school advocates and opponents, in June Maine became the 41st state to adopt legislation allowing the creation and oversight of charter schools.

Organizations representing public school teachers, local school boards and district superintendents had, for 17 years, blocked every attempt to pass a charter law.

"This legislation builds upon more than 15 years of research and best practices for charter school authorization in 40 states and the District of Columbia," says Maine Senator Garrett Paul Mason, the bill's sponsor. "We've learned from their experiences, and have had many years to examine what works and what doesn't to design legislation that will ensure Maine has high-quality public charter schools."

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The Maine affiliate of the National Education Association, the country's largest teachers' union, opposed Mason's bill. Even though it eventually lost the battle, the final legislation contained two provisions for which the teachers' union fought hard. First, the bill requires Maine's charter schools be staffed only by state-licensed teachers and principals. Second, it does not prohibit collective bargaining rights for charter school teachers.

"I want to make clear that we do not oppose charter schools on their face," says Rob Walker, executive director of the Maine Education Association, the NEA affiliate. "But there are certain things we think are crucial in the design, implementation and oversight of charter schools, and we were successful in arguing for several of those points."

Minnesota was the first state, in 1991, to pass a charter school law. California lawmakers followed in 1992. By 1995, 19 state legislatures had passed laws, and by 2003, 40 had.

For the nation's school choice movement, the recent vote in Maine was the latest in a string of victories across the country. There are now 1.8 million students across the nation enrolled in charter schools, up from 340,000 a decade ago. The number of charter schools continues to grow by roughly 7 percent a year, and is expected to top 5,300 by the end of this year. Still, charter schools represent only a little more than 5 percent of all public schools, and only about 3 percent of public school students attend them.

With the passage of Maine's legislation, only nine states now have no charter school law: Alabama, Kentucky, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, Vermont, Virginia and Washington.

Most, if not all, of the charter-related legislation enacted in 2009 and 2010 is directly attributable to the $4.35 billion federal Race to the Top competition, which rated states higher for support of charter schools. U.S. Education Secretary Ame Duncan has indicated a keen interest in expanding the role of charter schools as part of his school reform efforts.

Key questions about the effectiveness of charter schools remain, however, with studies divided on whether charter schools are, on average, any better than regular public schools.

LEGISLATIVE ACTION

Over the past three years, 16 state legislatures have lifted caps on charter-school enrollments or the number of charters allowed. Some did both.

New York lawmakers, for example, in 2010...