The Department of Education is accelerating the application process for the Charter Schools Program (CSP), after the Biden administration’s attempt to slow the process down and undermine charter schools—and school choice—more broadly.
As Independent Women senior fellow Ginny Gentles wrote for the blog in 2022,
The proposed changes would create insurmountable bureaucratic hurdles for most applicants, and lower-income communities that desperately need alternatives to failing traditional public schools would be denied CSP funding. Perhaps by design, the delay in the application process caused by the proposed rules would deter potential grantees from applying for CSP grants this year and prevent the creation of new educational options for communities and families who are poorly served by the traditional public school system.
Contrary to the Biden administration’s claims that there was little interest in the CSP, applications doubled when the Department of Education began accepting them again in May of this year—when it also increased funding by $60 million—and removed the red tape getting in the way of charter schools’ ability to operate.
In January, after the change in administrations, the Department withdrew two Biden-era Notices Inviting Application for the State Entity Charter School Grant Program and the Charter Management Organization Grant Program, which would have increased regulation. In the same vein, in February, the Department curbed the federal government’s oversight on state CSP grants. The Biden administration had made it such that “CSP grantees [were required] to provide additional information to the former Secretary of Education for these entities—already permitted under charter school state law—to authorize CSP-funded charter schools.” The Biden-era Department also asked Utah and South Carolina to provide information beyond what is normally required by the CSP.
All in all, these are promising actions that pave the way for more educational options and indicate a Department of Education that is dedicated to ensuring charter schools are not subject to the same regulatory burdens that all too often cripple residentially assigned public schools.