Slowly but surely, momentum is building for Mississippi to get more aggressive in creating charter schools in areas where traditional public schools are not doing their job.

Charter schools have been slow to get off the ground in Mississippi, in part because of a resistance to the idea not only from teachers’ unions but the existing education establishment itself.

The problem with the current method used to address failing districts — state takeover — is that they tend to revert back to their old ways once the state gives governance back to the same folks who mismanaged the district in the first place. The failed districts may get better for a little while, but it doesn’t take long before incompetence, sloth or financial malfeasance return. Even if no one means ill, failing schools have just such an awful inertia about them that it’s hard to prod them to sustained improvement. That’s why you need a different model.

Charter schools come in different flavors, but there are some outlines they usually follow. They tend to be started by a group of educators, entrepreneurs or even by community members themselves who are dissatisfied with the existing quality of education. They have to meet the same accountability standards as the regular public schools to keep their charter, but they don’t have to do all the paperwork or meet the state’s teacher licensure requirements. In short, they are free to experiment with curriculum, the length of the school day and year, teacher hiring and teacher pay, and most anything else, provided that their innovations actually produce measurable academic results.

Until last July, Mississippi had a charter school law, but it was a law in name only. It provided for only six charter schools in the entire state, but created roadblocks for even that few to get off the ground. As a result, during the entire 12 years that the law was on the books, only one charter school was created.

There are serious movements in the Legislature this year to enact a new, more expansive charter school law. Although there may be some differences about the details, the concept itself is commanding bipartisan support. The biggest obstacle remains those weak schools and districts that are afraid of competition.

It is wrong, though, to continue to trap students in substandard academic environments. If the existing schools are unable to fix themselves, it’s time to give someone else a crack.