In Arizona, charter schools continue to grow a shining example of what public education can be; the history of the charter schools arose, however, in the Land of a 10,000 Lakes.

"Twenty-five years ago this month, tucked in a voluminous education funding bill headed to the Minnesota governor’s desk, was a quirky and contentious idea to allow teachers and parents to create a new kind of public school—chartered schools.

"With a stroke of his pen, then-Gov. Arne Carlson signed into existence a movement that has grown over the last quarter-century into a national juggernaut: a charter school sector with thousands of schools, millions of students, a cadre of deep-pocketed benefactors, dozens of advocacy groups, and sophisticated networks of schools that in some cases dwarf the nation’s average-size school district."--Arianna Prothero, Education Week