Charter schools are publicly funded schools of choice operating free of state regulation and independent of local school districts. Twenty-nine states have enacted laws establishing charter schools since 1991. Nationwide, an estimated 700 charter schools have opened their doors and hundreds more are planned This study examines the organizational and political obstacles encountered by "start-from-scratch" charter schools. We analyze what these challenges mean for individual charter schools, the charter school experiment in general, and the state's policy role in governing these new institutions.