Charter schools are public schools. Teachers are required to be certified. And a lot of positive things are going on inside charter school classrooms.

About 400 charter school teachers, administrators, parents and officials gathered at Utah Valley State College on Monday and Tuesday to celebrate Utah's growing charter school movement at the second annual Utah Charter School Conference.

When school begins again, Utah will have more than 60 charter schools. As of fall 2007, Utah charter schools served more than 22,000 students - about 4 percent of all students in public schools.

"Charters are becoming an integral part of public education," said Kim Frank, executive director of the Utah Association of Public Charter Schools. "We want to enhance public education."

Though charter schools are public schools, they have more flexibility when it comes to instruction than traditional public schools. They also aren't subject to the same rules regarding hiring and firing of teachers as traditional public schools.

Some have criticized charter schools, saying they're not as rigorous as traditional public schools, but educators at the conference said education shouldn't be one-size-fits-all.

"Sometimes we get criticized, and we're still new enough that that happens," said Billie Telford, a special education teacher at American Leadership Academy in Spanish Fork. "We're trying to say, 'Look we can do this and do it really well.' "

Educators also celebrated the fact that the U.S. Department of Education this week awarded Utah $12.8 million to help support newer charter schools.