If asked what he did with his summer vacation, 11 year-old Matthew Austin could say, "I met President Obama, was on national television, and became a face of the charter school movement." But he probably won't. Austin is confident, humble, and thoughtful. He credits his academic success and love for school to the teachers at Howard University Public Charter School in Washington, D.C. where he returns for his 8th grade year this fall.

Over the summer Austin was selected to introduce his 7th grade teacher, Kimberly Worthy, D.C.'s Teacher of the Year, at the National Charter Schools Conference hosted by the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools. Backstage, his mother cried and hugged him. And U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, standing by, was impressed by Austin's maturity and poise, his mother's commitment to his education, and his heartfelt praise of his teachers' and charter school.

Because of this, Austin was selected to introduce President Obama before a televised national announcement on the Race to the Top. Race to the Top is a new grant program that will distribute $4.35 billion to states who can demonstrate that they are making serious efforts to improving their public schools. The Department of Education has outlined four key things that states must do in order to be eligible for these funds. One of those is supporting the growth of high-quality charter schools.

In President Obama's own words, from this speech, "...if we are holding charter schools accountable and if we are holding them to a high standard of excellence, then I believe they can be a force for innovation in our public schools...And that's why we will reward states that pursue rigorous and accountable charter schools with Race to the Top fund grants."

A little history
Charter schools came into being in 1992 when the first charter school law was passed in Minnesota. First imagined by Al Shanker, then president of the American Federation of Teachers, charter schools are independent public schools that are free to adapt curriculum and school culture in innovative ways. In exchange for this freedom, charter schools operate under a charter that holds the school accountable for improved student achievement. Charter schools foster a partnership between parents, teachers and students to create an environment in which parents can be more involved, teachers are given freedom to innovate and students are provided the structure they need to learn. They are tuition-free, public schools.

Since the passage of that first charter law 18 years ago, 40 states and the District of Columbia have joined the movement. Currently, there are more than 1.4 million students attending 4,600 charter schools. And tremendous public support for more charter schools is demonstrated by the great number of parents who want to send their student to a charter school.

Enrolling in a charter school
As public schools, charter schools cannot turn any student away. However the number of students allowed to enroll in a school is determined by that school's individual charter contract. In the case that there are more students wanting to enroll than there are seats approved, students are admitted in by lottery. One top-performing charter school, Harlem Village Academy in New York City, reported that 3,500 parents entered the lottery hoping for one of 475 spaces available for the 2009 school year. In 2005, it was estimated that nationally there were more than 365,000 students on charter school waiting lists like this one. And as that number grows, the number of charter schools is growing right alng with it.

• More than 1.4 million students now attend over 4,600 public charter schools in 40 states and the District of Columbia
• The student population has grown 11% and the number of schools has grown 8% since one year ago (2007-2008)
• 62% of public charter school students are non-white and 48% qualify for free and reduced price lunch (compared with 47% non-white and 45% free and reduced price lunch in all non-charter schools)
• Charter schools only account for about 5 % of American high schools -- but 17 out of the top 100 as determined by in Newsweek and 18 out of the top hundred according to US News and World Report.

What does a charter school look like?
Charter schools vary tremendously across the nation.

Some of them, about 22%, are operated by management organizations like the Knowledge is Power Program (KIPP), Aspire Public Schools, YES Prep, Building Excellent Schools and more. However most charter schools (77%) are started by passionate parents, teachers, or community leaders seeking to create a unique school tailored to serve the students they know. Not surprisingly, the schools themselves area as diverse as the people and motiviations that created them. A small handful of examples include:

The Denver School of Science and Technology's first graduating class, in 2008 had more minority and low income students attending four year colleges and universities than from any school in the state.

Robert Treat Academy in Newark, NJ had the highest 2008 test scores of any K-8 school not only in Newark, but in all of urban New Jersey.

Last year Bay Haven Charter Academy in Panama City, Florida's elementary school ranked first out of twenty schools in Bay District, and the middle school ranked first out of the seven Bay District middle schools.

Community Day Public Charter School in Lawrence Massachusetts is a k-8 that opened in 1995, and they sure give kids a great start. 91 % of their students have gone on to graduate high school in 4 years, and 80 % of those graduates are now in colleges and universities across the country.

The Obama Affect
In his first address to Congress, President Obama called for states to eliminate barriers to charter school growth by asking lawmakers to lift caps on the number of charter schools that can exist in their state. And Education Secretary Arne Duncan has continually echoed the President saying, "States that do not have public charter laws or put artificial caps on the growth of charter schools will jeopardize their applications under the Race to the Top Fund." Currently, 26 states cap charters and in the 10 states that prohibit them altogether.

States are already responding to the Race to the Top carrot. Illinois has doubled the number of charter schools allowed in the state. Tennessee raised its cap from 50 to 90 charters. Louisiana altogether tossed its cap of 70 charters. Delaware let lapse a year-long moratorium on new charter schools. Damaging charter school legislation was averted in Indiana and Ohio. Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick, with Duncan at his side, proposed a major expansion of charters. And Rhode Island legislators reversed course and funded the new Mayoral Academies, with a little help from an emphatic secretary Duncan who made a blunt comment at the National Charter School Conference, "Places like Rhode Island that are thinking about under-funding charters are obviously going to put themselves at a huge competitive disadvantage going forward."

Why Charter Our Future?

These days, you'd be hard pressed to find anyone who thinks that our public education system is, by in large, working well. But you'd be just as hard pressed to find anyone who wants to take on the challenge as if it were a monolith to be fought with a single quiver of antiquated arrows. If you chose to look at it cynically, you could say that charter schools are a way to lessen the load, share the burden and let someone else develop a system that works.

That same cynicism, however, can be looked at as the innovative incubator that it is. It allows motivated people to create custom solutions to problems that are unique to their communities and student populations. And they do so while being free from many of the regulations and teachers unions that otherwise limit the manner and content of their teaching. The lessens they learn can, in turn, be applied to any school, anywhere, thus improving the larger system.

However, its far from a free ride. Charter schools are held to a standard of greater accountability. Just as importantly, they have a profound affect on the larger education system, as the lessens learned - and burdens lessened - by charter schools inspire and allow growth for all schools.

A recent report by the US Department Education found that:

· Among districts in the Study, nearly half of district leaders reported becoming more customer service oriented, increasing their marketing and public relations efforts, or increasing the frequency of their communication with parents. In many districts, administrators began paying close attention to their local charter schools, typically by tracking the number of students who attended charter schools and monitoring charter school students' test scores.
· Most districts implemented new educational programs, made changes in educational structures in district schools, and/or created new schools with programs that were similar to those in the local charter schools.

Needless to say, charter schools are not without their opponents. Historically, teachers unions and many district administrators have protested the proliferation of charter schools, as they often mean reduced enrollment - and revenue - for these large established systems that are faced with doing the same old thing, but with less money.
Indeed, while the teachers union initially turned a blind eye to the non-unionized charter schools, as they spread, the union is, predictably, making attempts to organize. So far it has been an interesting, if inconclusive, battle to watch, as the independent nature of charter schools is inherently antithetical to the homogenizing force of unions.

As a NY Times article about an attempt to unionize the teachers at KIPP AMP charter school in Crown Heights, Brooklyn puts it, "Perhaps the standoff should not be a surprise. Charter schools, which are publicly financed but operate independently, were founded in opposition to teachers' unions; many of the movement's supporters view union contracts as a fundamental flaw in public education that keeps ineffective teachers on the job."
Although there is no official stand regarding unions in charter schools - and laws vary on a state by state basis - it is worth noting that in the case of KIPP AMP school, the teacher who initially launched the union attempt, later withdrew it. A follow up article in the NY Times reported that she was "withdrawing her support from a unionization drive that she says is proving to be a distraction and more about power than children." The article further quotes that teacher as saying, "I am a teacher and I can't waste energy - all I want to do is make the school better. I saw early on that the union was not, in my opinion, looking to have amicable conversations with the administration. We were being encouraged to be even more miserable, and if I can avoid misery, I want to do that."

What Are We learning?

At its core, the charter school movmenet is about finding a way to educate children, and it acknowedges that we all need to learn different thigns, in different ways, for different reasons. But this movement is actually about more than that, is is about creating education change in another way. It's changing the way we think about delivering public education. The charter school movement is about enlisting school leaders, teachers, parents, and entrepreneurs who don't accept excuses. There is no room for a complaint like, "the kids are poor, they're dropouts, they're English Language Learners" -- because for every excuse-maker there is a charter school that's taking those same kids and putting them on the path to college.

And it really does seem to be working. Much school reform literature suggests that it takes at least 7 to 10 years for school-wide reform efforts to make substantial changes in student performance, which is confirmed by the high-quality studies in the Alliance's Charter School Achievement: What We Know (2009). Consequently, as public charter schools get older and more experienced, we believe that public charter schools will get even better at providing high quality learning environments. That makes the interplay between the following statistics pretty interesting:
• Nationally, the average public charter school has been open 6.2 years
• As of the 2008-2009 academic year, 23% of charter schools have been open at least 10 years. Four years ago, only 7% of charter schools had been open more than 10 years

So we are only now really able to judge the efficacy of charter schools, and so far, they seem to be passing with flying colors.

Which, again, brings us back to the support for charter schools by education Secretary Arne Duncan and President Obama, both of whom have repeatedly called for an increase in the number of charter schools. And Duncan's declaration that, ""The charter movement is absolutely one of the most profound changes in American education, bringing new options to underserved communities and introducing competition and innovation into the education system."