The Personalized Learning method followed by CORE has its roots in the homeschool movement, where, for decades, parents have privately tailored learning for their children according to their individual needs and preferences. Prior to the 1990s in California, parents had few choices for their children's education: the public school system, a private school, or private homeschooling. In 1992, California's elected officials enacted California's Charter School Act, which established public charter schools as an option for parents, students, teachers, and community members to design self-governing schools within the public school system to meet the needs of their community. Charter schools were envisioned to provide new, better, and more flexible and innovative opportunities for California students within the public school system as an alternative solution to a voucher system.

 

And so like most great endeavors, CORE arose as a way to support something that was already happening. Personalized Learning, as it was to become known, was more a response to the "radical" concept in education that the family is the foundation of learning. That is why a group of educators and parents decided to found a charter school, originally chartered through Camptonville Union Elementary School District. CORE Placer Charter school is now chartered through Colfax Elementary School District and CORE Butte Charter School is chartered through the Butte County Board of Education.

 

CORE's beginnings were modest, with a handful of students, based out of a single-wide trailer in Camptonville, "up past the pizza place next to Mrs. Wittler's barn." Because word spread of this unique family support as an educational unit, and because of the ability for students in the contiguous counties to have access to this program, CORE's growth was exponential, hastening the need to have a larger, more central administrative center with regional "resource centers" in the various communities.