The Charter Schools Program (CSP) is a key lever that the federal government uses to ensure charter schools provide more students access to excellent public schools. As the U.S. Department of Education studies the program, a new NACSA brief, U.S. Department of Education’s CSP: Investing in Students by Investing in Charter School Authorizing, provides four recommendations for improving technical assistance in the CSP State Entity grant — a critical component to ensuring strong, equitable, and effective authorizing:
- Boost funding for technical assistance, by increasing the 7% set-aside to at least 10%;
- Promote and support high-quality authorizing by ensuring half of all technical assistance funding is used on authorizing;
- Provide flexibility for grantees to spend more technical assistance funding in the first two-years of grants; and
- Ensure transparency and effectiveness by requiring grantees to conduct a needs assessment when applying for and an evaluation when concluding a CSP grant.
To learn more about CSP and the technical assistance set-aside, DOWNLOAD THE REPORT.