See our latest EdFacts flashcards on 25 Years of Charter Schools.

Twenty-five years ago, Minnesota’s governor signed the country’s first charter school law — paving the way to the creation of more than 6,800 public charter schools serving about 2.9 million students.

“As long as we have the law of chartering, we have the basis for innovation,” said Ember Reichgott Junge, the former Minnesota State Senator who authored the original legislation told EdWeek in a recent interview. “The chartering law doesn’t create the innovation itself, it creates the opportunity for innovation for the right leaders.”

An education analyst, Ray Budde, published Education by Charter: Restructuring School Districts, a 1988 report that proposed a new model for school governance. His idea sparked a national dialogue, which led to the passage of the first charter law three years later.

California adopted the country’s second charter school law the following year, and today there are charter laws in 43 states and the District of Columbia.

As the charter movement matured, there were efforts to replicate the school models that were proving most successful. There were also efforts to ensure accountability — so that charter schools were truly providing high-quality education to their students. And, increasingly, there were efforts to study charter schools’ results.

The Walton Family Foundation has played a leading role in the growth of the charter school movement. It was one of the first philanthropies to support the expansion of high-quality public charter schools.

Since its first charter school grant in 1997, the Walton Family Foundation has given more than $386 million in grants to charter startups, helping to create more than 2,100 charter schools, serving more than 840,000 students. The foundation has supported about a quarter of all charter schools in the United States.

Based on unmet demand for these schools — as well as charters’ historical growth trajectory — there could be 10 million children in charters by 2030.

The Walton Family Foundation is committed to continuing to fuel innovation and continue supporting opportunities for children and families. It has committed to investing $1 billion between 2015 and 2020 to create more high-quality charter schools and other educational opportunities for U.S. students and families.

See our latest EdFacts flashcards on 25 Years of Charter Schools for more detail about the birth and growth of the charter school movement.