members. Such schools must be approved by their local school district, following negotiations over a contract or "charter" based upon a proposal drafted by prospective founders. Charters have originated with small groups of people investing a few hundred hours, as well as from larger groups devoting thousands of hours to drafting proposals including detailed curricula, building plans, administrative guidelines, and grant proposals (Mund, 1999). It was with such a group that my family joined to help create and operate Jefferson Academy Charter School in Broomfield, Colorado under the auspices of CRS 22-30.5, the Colorado Charter Schools Act of 1993.
             Policymakers and education professionals searching for creative and practical education reforms adopted the original philosophy for charter schools from an idea presented by Albert Shanker at the American Federation of Teachers conference in 1988 (Mund, 1999). The first state to implement a Charter School Act was Minnesota, whose law went into effect in 1991. Since that time, 35 other states have enacted charter school laws, with proposals waiting in the legislatures of many more (Charter School Legislation, 1999). These laws vary in their specifics, with some freely allowing numerous charters to open, while others make the process nearly impossible. Colorado's CRS 22-30.5 currently ranks twelfth among the thirty-five charter school laws compared nationwide by the Center For Education Reform (1999). This modest score is a product of Colorado's having but a single chartering authority, and also of not allowing automatic waivers from state and district laws. Colorado's commitment to improving the strength of Charter Schools remains strong, however. In 1998, the Charter Schools Act was renewed, making it a permanent law in Colorado.
             Although many charter schools share curricula, such as the Core Knowledge Sequence by E.D. Hirsch (Toch, 1996), every school is unique in its own way due to t...