Education Department to Release Grants for Charter Schools, Remove Regulations

Two girls read a book together during a lesson at Carter Traditional Elementary School in Louisville, Ky., on Jan. 24, 2022. Jon Cherry/Getty Images

The U.S. Department of Education announced that it is easing regulatory measures pertaining to grant applications for charter schools as part of a school choice expansion.

The department is withdrawing two “burdensome and misaligned” notices for two grant programs aimed at charter schools, it said in a Jan. 31 statement. These notices were published during the last days of the Biden administration and, according to the agency, imposed “excessive regulatory burdens and promoted discriminatory practices.”

Charter schools are publicly funded but privately managed. These schools do not have to follow state or district requirements and can set up their own curriculum and regulations, but they operate according to a set of rules, or “charter.”

The department intends to issue revised Notices Inviting Application (NIA) that will have a “more streamlined application process.”

The new NIAs will evaluate applicants for the grant programs based on their alignment with the Trump administration’s commitment to “expanding high-quality charter schools, reducing federal micromanagement, eliminating ideological overreach, and empowering families with greater educational choice,” according to the statement.

The department also said it is “fast-tracking” the release of $33 million in grants under the Charter School Program (CSP) that were earlier stalled by the Biden administration.

The grants will expand “high-quality educational opportunities” and are prohibited from spending funds on “DEI initiatives or race-based discriminatory practices,” the department said.

Madi Biedermann, deputy assistant secretary for the department’s office of communications and outreach, said the department is seeking to expand access to educational options for students while ensuring federal resources are used effectively.

President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Jan. 29 that called for “expanding educational freedom and opportunity for families.”

The order states: “Parents want and deserve the best education for their children. But too many children do not thrive in their assigned, government-run K-12 school.”

The order cited the recent National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) report, which showed that “70 percent of 8th graders were below proficient in reading, and 72 percent were below proficient in math.”

The education department said in a Jan. 29 statement that the results “reveal a heartbreaking reality for American students and confirm our worst fears: not only did most students not recover from pandemic-related learning loss, but those students who were the most behind and needed the most support have fallen even further behind.”

“Despite the billions of dollars that the federal government invests in K-12 education annually, and the approximately $190 billion in federal pandemic funds, our education system continues to fail students across the nation,” the department stated.

More than a dozen states have enacted universal K-12 scholarship programs, which allow families to choose the educational setting for their children, according to the Trump executive order.

“It is the policy of my Administration to support parents in choosing and directing the upbringing and education of their children,” the order states.

The order called on the Secretary of Education to include “education freedom” as a priority for grants.

A report from November 2023 revealed that students at charter schools had better test scores compared to their public school counterparts.

“We find that charter schools are quite a bit more cost-effective, so for every dollar in, they provide much better test scores, and they have a higher ROI [return on investment],” Josh McGee, one of the researchers, told The Epoch Times in an earlier interview.

“For each year of education, students will learn more and make more by going to charter schools rather than traditional public schools.”

Patricia Tolson contributed to the report.