Every year, when the National Charter School Law Rankings are released, the immediate question is often, “Who moved up and who moved down?”

That is the wrong question.

The more important question is “Why?”

Last week, coinciding with the annual National Charter Schools Conference, CER previewed findings from its annual rankings, due out in full this August. The preview alone offers plenty to examine — and plenty for policymakers to reckon with.

For nearly 30 years, the National Charter School Law Rankings and Scorecard have provided something rare in education policy: a longitudinal record of what states actually do to create — or constrain — educational opportunity. Unlike test scores, enrollment numbers, political rhetoric, or campaign promises, charter school laws reveal the underlying conditions that determine whether innovative schools can be created, replicated, sustained, and held accountable over time.

Strong schools do not emerge by accident; they emerge when policymakers create conditions that allow talented educators, community leaders, universities, nonprofits, and entrepreneurs to build new opportunities for families. Weak laws often produce exactly what one would expect: limited growth, bureaucratic barriers, uneven quality, and frustration for parents seeking alternatives.

Over time, the rankings have become less about annual movement and more about understanding patterns. And those patterns contain lessons every policymaker should study.

The Iowa Lesson: Transformation Is Possible

Perhaps the most striking example this year is Iowa.

As recently as five years ago, Iowa’s charter school law earned an ‘F’ grade and ranked dead last out of 46. Now they’ve risen to among the top ten of all charter school laws in strength, paving the way for a healthy and vibrant charter school environment to grow.

Iowa’s rise demonstrates that charter school laws are not predetermined by the first legislative session where they are debated but by leadership.

That’s what Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds did. Upon her election, she began to learn that a state constraining charter school approvals to school boards — limiting autonomy, limiting financial foundation — cannot meaningfully serve families. She and her team educated their colleagues and other state leaders, and what emerged is the most rapidly significant improvement in any law’s trajectory in the 35 years charter laws have existed.

It shows that states can fundamentally change course when lawmakers make a sustained commitment to improving policy. Good policy can overcome years of stagnation.

Strong Starts Matter

Another lesson emerges from states that adopted strong charter law provisions early and largely stayed the course. When high-quality charter schools open and families benefit, the results become visible. Parents become advocates, communities see the impact, and policymakers recognize the value. Over time, those successes create a constituency that makes it far more difficult to weaken, dilute, or roll back opportunities that have proven to work.

Florida is perhaps the clearest example. Despite political shifts, changing administrations, economic downturns, and fierce policy debates, Florida has remained committed to maintaining and improving a charter school environment that supports growth and innovation — including adopting universities as independent authorizers to drive additional expansion in the sector.

Michigan offers a similar story. Even amid rife opposition and too many lawmakers at state and local levels hostile to expansion, the Wolverine State’s charter environment has continued to grow. That’s because its law started among the best — with fidelity to the key elements that make charter laws work: multiple authorizers, expansive freedom to operate, and funds following students — and so it has remained.

Once policymakers establish high-quality frameworks, families begin to rely on those opportunities, educators invest in building schools, and institutions develop around them. That creates resilience. Political challenges may arise, but strong systems tend to endure.

The lesson is not that reform is easy. The lesson is that reform, once embedded in law and culture, becomes difficult to reverse.

The Danger of Incrementalism

Not every state follows that path. Some adopt charter laws, receive praise from advocates as “good starts,” promise to do more later — but never create the conditions that allow the public to see and truly understand the extraordinary impact a healthy crop of charter schools has on kids, families, and communities. Because their laws layer restrictions onto opportunities, charter operators spend more time and resources managing bureaucracy than building great schools. Maryland, Nevada, and Kentucky are recurring examples.

Other states adopt charter school laws simply to check a box — creating them in name only, diluting the concept, and giving lawmakers a false sense of accomplishment while failing the very communities they were elected to serve. Virginia, Kentucky, and Kansas are prime examples.

What History Has Taught Us

The greatest value of CER’s National Charter School Law Rankings and Scorecard is not only what it reveals about education freedom and innovation, but the historical record it provides.

Over three decades, the rankings have documented which policies produce growth, which reforms improve quality, which barriers limit opportunity, and which states consistently put families first. They tell the story of states that made bold decisions and saw results — and of states that hesitated and fell behind. They reveal that educational opportunity is rarely an accident; it is usually the result of deliberate policy choices made years earlier.

That is why policymakers, advocates, journalists, researchers, and families should pay attention.

The rankings are not simply a scorecard. They are a roadmap — showing how educational opportunity is built, sustained, and expanded, and why the laws behind that opportunity deserve careful study.