Florida’s charter school law, which makes it easy to open charter schools and difficult to monitor them, has spurred a multimillion dollar industry and a school boom — all while leading to chronic governance problems and a higher-than-average rate of school failure.

Nationally, about 12 percent of all charter schools that have opened in the past two decades have shut down, according to the National Resource Center on Charter School Finance & Governance. In Florida, the failure rate is double, state records show.

The bulk of charter school problems have surfaced in states like Florida that have “a large number of charter schools and rapid growth,” said Gary Miron, an education professor at Western Michigan University who studies the charter school industry. In many cases, Miron said, the agencies charged with oversight were underfunded.

Experts say some of the problems, both financial and academic, could be avoided if charter school authorizers were stricter in issuing school charters. (In Florida, local school districts and colleges can authorize charter schools.)

“Florida has one of the most liberal laws as far as establishing a charter school goes,” said Jeffrey Grove, a research associate for the nonpartisan Southern Regional Educational Board.

Florida law also is hands-off when it comes to existing charter schools, giving operators the power to run schools with little oversight from the state or local school districts. Districts can close a charter school, but only if the school is in extreme financial distress or chronically low performing. Other than that, there is little a district can do when academic, financial or governance problems arise.

States have developed their own ways of overseeing charter schools and, in particular, protecting against conflicts of interest.

Some are stricter than others. For example, Pennsylvania and Massachusetts both require charter school administrators and board members to file financial disclosure forms. Florida law requires financial disclosure forms only for board members on charter schools sponsored by municipalities.

Guilbert Hentschke, an education professor at the University of Southern California who studies charter school management issues, said requiring financial disclosures is an effective way to make sure potential conflicts are aired publicly — and to discourage conflicts before they arise.

“That’s the thing you look for first,” Hentschke said.

Some states also maintain greater control over who can serve on a charter school’s governing board, which typically decides school policies and approves contracts. Michigan, New York and Massachusetts require authorizers to formally approve the members of a charter school board. Several states require at least one board member to be a parent of a student in the school; some states require a schoolteacher on the board.

In Florida, anyone can serve on a charter school board, though all potential members must first pass a criminal background check.

States also exercise varying levels of control over charter schools’ finances and business transactions.

Arizona requires all charter schools to follow the state’s competitive bidding rules for any goods or services purchased with tax dollars. Delaware also requires charter schools to use the state’s purchasing system. And at least three states — New York, New Mexico and Tennessee — ban for-profit companies from managing charter schools.