Education Secretary Arne Duncan Announces Twelve Grants for $50 Million to Charter School Management Organizations

U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan today announced 12 charter school grants totaling $50 million for charter management organizations to replicate and expand high-quality charter schools that have demonstrated success. The Charter School Grant Program competition represents the first time the Department has specifically sought out to replicate and expand the nation's highest-performing charter management organizations. Today's grants will serve 76,000 students in 127 new and 31 expanded charter schools over the next five years.

"Several high-quality charter schools across the country are making an amazing difference in our childrens' lives, especially when charters in inner-city communities are performing as well, if not better, than their counterparts in much wealthier suburbs," Duncan said. "Every one of our grantees serves a student population that is at least 70% low-income and virtually all exceed the average academic performance for all students in their state."

The Administration will invest more than $256 million this year to assist in the planning and implementation of public charter schools and dissemination of their successful practices through the Charter School Grants Program. In addition, the President's fiscal year 2011 budget requests a $54 million increase in the Charter School Grants Program, seeking $310 million and representing another step toward meeting the Administration's commitment to double financial support for the program.

The purpose of the Charter School Grants Program, managed by the Department's Office of Innovation and Improvement, is to increase financial support for these public schools, build a better national understanding of the public charter school model and increase the number of high-quality public charter schools across the nation.

More information about the Charter Schools Program is available from the Education Department's Office of Innovation and Improvement at: http://www.ed.gov/programs/charter/index.html.

Following is a list of grantees by state. The list includes the first-year grant award amount for each grantee.