This is in reference to the Sun Journal article April 29, “Bill would allow charter schools.” The proposal is a welcome follow-up to the grants for alternative learning modalities by the Gates Foundation through Maine’s Mitchell Institute. There are 41 states, as well as the federal government, that already sponsor charter schools. But Maine’s proposal has elements that would keep Maine in the forefront of education reform. I can envision the University of Maine at Farmington, Unity College or UMO working with the small schools of Phillips, Kingfield, Statton and Rangeley to make them the equal of the best private schools.

Across America, options to government schools have been emerging for three decades. From some 2,000 non-school students in 1980, the number of “walk-aways” has grown to over 2 million today. Home schooling, unschooling, independent study programs, community learning centers, learning co-ops, libraries and museums have taken on the task of providing learning opportunities to non-school students. Locally controlled charter schools as options to ancient authoritarian, patriarchal, undemocratic school systems are welcome innovations.

Social evolution, brain research, new technologies, as well as history, demand a learning system that provides every citizen the freedom, the right, the resources and the opportunity to learn what they want, when they want it and how they want it. Charter schools are a welcome step toward that goal.

Bill Ellis, A Coalition for Self-Learning, Rangeley