May 21, 2025 12:27:04 PM
Charter schools are public schools with a purpose. Operating independently from traditional school districts, they're tuition-free, open to all students, and publicly funded—but with more flexibility to innovate in exchange for higher accountability. For many parents, especially in communities where traditional schools have struggled, charters have offered fresh hope and real alternatives.
In 1993, when charter schools were a new, bipartisan idea, President Bill Clinton proposed supporting them with federal funds. Two years later, Congress made it happen by putting $6 million into competitive grants to states. The winning states sent the money on to new operators to get charter schools off the ground.
Since then, the federal Charter Schools Program (CSP) has become a vital source of funding, helping new charter schools launch and supporting high-performing ones as they grow. Here’s how the program works, why it matters, and where it’s headed today.
The federal government gives approximately $440 million to charter schools every year, competitively distributed to both states and directly to charter school operators. Since its inception 27 years ago, the Charter Schools Program has provided more than $6 billion to charters.
The money covers essential, hard-to-fund expenses, like facilities and start-up costs that must be paid before the first students even walk through the doors. A small subset of the money goes to replicating schools that have shown a track record of success with their students.
The money has been crucial to charter school expansion. As of the 2016–17 school year—the most recent year with publicly available data—45% of charter schools had received funds through the program.
It’s also important to keep the growth of charter schools in context. Though their number has grown rapidly since the ‘90s, they now serve only 7.5% of the nation’s public school students—roughly 3.7 million children.
Similarly, that $6 billion for charter schools may sound like big bucks, but in reality, it is chump change compared to funds for Title I, the main federal support for schools serving low-income families. That $6 billion over multiple decades is just a fraction of what the feds invested in Title I over the same time period.
When Biden took office, funding for the Charter Schools Program held steady at the $440 million mark. Though a supporter of quality charter schools, Biden has close ties to teachers unions—who strongly oppose charters because they shift money out of traditional school districts, which threatens their jobs and salaries.
In early spring 2022, the Charter Schools Program became a political football. The Biden administration proposed new regulations that made it harder for charter schools to qualify for federal funds—adding requirements around community demand, desegregation efforts, and restrictions on for-profit operators. These updated rules:While targeting for-profit charter schools makes sense to many, some of these new rules are more problematic. These policies overlook the reality in many urban communities, where enrollment is declining, but the need for better schools remains urgent. At stake is a deeper question: Are charter schools a luxury to cut when numbers drop, or a vital strategy for innovation when traditional schools fall short?
The program’s future has become even more uncertain under President Trump, who returned to office in 2025. His administration has renewed efforts to dismantle the U.S. Department of Education altogether—an unprecedented move that could upend how federal education programs, including the CSP, are administered and funded.
At the same time, Trump has signed an executive order directing federal agencies to prioritize private school vouchers and other school choice initiatives, raising real concerns that CSP funding could be redirected or significantly reduced.
Together, these moves mark a sharp shift in federal education priorities and cast doubt on whether the government will continue investing in new charter school growth. Losing that support wouldn’t just stall progress—it would pull the rug out from under schools that are reimagining what public education can be.
Last Updated: April 2025