Money to Replicate

Today the U.S. Department of Education's Charter School Program released a new competitive grant program notice. This one is for charter schools that want to replicate and serve turnaround schools.

This grant program, in Title V of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (f.k.a. No Child Left Behind), is a new program in support of high quality charter schools with demonstrated records of success. Priority will be given to charter schools assisting turnaround schools in poverty areas.

Each applicant for this grant needs to demonstrate that they have strong academic results and there are no significant issues in the areas of student safety, financial management, or statutory or regulatory compliance in order to be competitive against the other applicants.

The anticipated average award will be $7 million for a five-year period. An estimated 5-8 awards will be given this fall.

Tennessee Squeezes Their Charters Out of Race to the Top Funds, Too

It's not just Colorado that has no plans to share their Race to the Top Funds with public charter schools. Back in January, I wrote about Colorado's RttT application not having any benefit for our state's charter schools. Colorado was selected as one of the 16 finalists for Race to the Top, but only Tennessee and Delaware were chosen for Phase One funding.

Race to the Top is a U.S. Department of Education competitive grant that is awarded to state's meeting certain criteria. One of these is how they treat their charter schools. Colorado faired well in this category.

The Memphis Business Journal reports their state's charter schools won't receive a benefit from the Race to the Top funding recently awarded to Tennessee. The money will be given to school districts that do not have an obligation to equitably distribute those funds to their public charter schools. The reason for this juxtaposition is that the federal RttT guidance doesn't include charter schools in a meaningful way. The grant is very misleading to the public who thinks that because states must be "charter friendly" in order to get the grant, the charter schools would receive some sort of benefit. Not so.