• The Center on Education Reform has information on over 4,000 charter schools that opened in the past 16 years nationwide, since the first charter school law was enacted. Only 11% of charters have closed because they did not perform at required levels or were unable to attract enough students to be financially viable. Compared with the failure rate of small businesses, which are usually not nearly as complex as schools to operate, this is a remarkably low percentage. • Charter schools continue to expand at a double-digit rate, indicating their popularity with parents and students and their academic success. • The RAND Corporation recently issued an Occasional Paper entitled “Making Sense of Charter Schools,” which reported that California students in start-up (as opposed to conversion) charter schools with project-based instruction have higher test scores than students in comparable traditional public schools. A recent 24-page research report from EdSource concluded that charter schoo