Dive Brief:

• On Monday, the U.S. Department of Education announced it would hand out $157 million in grants for charter schools through its Charter Schools Program (CSP).
• But Education Secretary Arne Duncan also called for greater fiscal responsibility in charter schools, saying, “We still see too many reports of unscrupulous behavior of charter schools and their authorizers.”
• In 2013-14, nearly half of the country’s public charter schools received CSP funds.

Dive Insight:

Of the $157 million, $32 million will go toward expanding already high-performing charter networks. The rest will go to newer grantees, to be disbursed competitively at the state level.

This year, the largest state grantee was Ohio, which has been rocked by charter oversight scandals. Earlier this year, the state’s charter schools chief resigned after fudging state accountability reports on low-performing charter schools. Ohio and other states have also seen low scores coming out of the rapidly expanding online charter schooling sector. An investigation in Colorado two years ago found that online schools regularly underperformed and lacked oversight, with students who switched to online schools performing worse than they did in their old schools.

Recommended Reading

Education Week: Education Dept. to Charter Schools: Here's Millions in Grants, Be M...