Charter schools have emerged as the latest model for school reform. This handbook contextualizes the emergence of the charter-school concept by examining both the broader political shift in educational governance toward local control and the more specific movement in school reform toward greater institutional autonomy and school-based change. The discussion focuses solely on the emergence of the charter-school concept and its relationship to past school-reform efforts and the current movement to alter educational governance. Borrowing from the first and second waves of reform, the charter-school concept embodies the values most central to school improvement in the last decade--accountability, school-based change, teacher professionalism, and school choice. The book suggests that the charter-school concept provides opportunities for school-based change, teacher empowerment, and accountability that past reforms did not. (Contains 39 references.) (LMI)