Weekend greetings, CharterFolk.
It’s been another week of tumult coming out of Washington, much of it directly affecting our work.
On Friday, the Trump Administration weighed in to support the creation of religious charter schools.
Earlier in the week, Linda McMahon made her first school visit as U.S. Secretary — to a charter school.
In between, the Administration took a sledgehammer to higher education …
… and to the Department of Education.
I know CharterFolk have a wide range of reactions to these developments. I tend to see them as inevitabilities.
Higher Ed’s Reckoning
For years, higher education has aligned itself with the far left while remaining financially dependent on federal funding — an inherently unstable arrangement. Sooner or later, a shift in Washington was bound to trigger a backlash. Now, with control in different hands, the consequences are unfolding. These cuts aren’t just budgetary — they’re structural. The collateral damage? Scientific research and the ability to attract top-tier global talent, both critical to maintaining the country’s scientific leadership.
And this may only be the beginning. If the Administration follows through with proposed tax hikes on university endowments, we may move from a budgetary blow to something more like a meteor strike.
The Department of Education: A Long Time Coming
The Department of Education has struggled at its mission for generations. If it were a charter school, its renewal would legitimately be very much in doubt. Instead of focusing on fostering better outcomes, it has imposed labyrinthine regulations that burden schools rather than improve them.
I wrote over the summer about how the Biden Administration’s now-rescinded Title IX regulations ran nearly half a million words long …
… an emblem of bureaucracy run amok. Yes, federal funding for low-income and special education students has been vital. But the tradeoff has been a regulatory stranglehold that has greatly diminished, if not countered entirely, the impact of additional resources.
Many in our world argue that downsizing the department means abandoning protections for vulnerable students, particularly given concerns about the potential closure or relocation of the Office for Civil Rights. I get those concerns. But let’s not pretend that the existing system is some paragon of virtue. Public education in America, as I’ve long argued, is one great, ongoing societal violation of civil rights — allocating educational opportunity unfairly, perpetuating historical inequities instead of addressing them.
So if these cuts feel like chickens coming home to roost, it’s because they are.
But once again, research ends up as collateral damage, along with the critical testing and reporting infrastructure that tells us whether students are actually learning.
The Supreme Court and the Charter School Wild Card
On the Supreme Court case, I’ve been saying for a long time that the writing is on the wall. It seems increasingly likely that the Court will forge new ground here. The Administration’s gesture this week only confirms that suspicion.
The real question is whether the decision will be another sledgehammer — this time aimed at the heart of the national charter school movement — or whether it will be more precise in its impact.
We will see.
Recovery from the Wrecking Ball
For higher ed and the Department of Ed, recovery from these broad cuts is at least conceivable. Follow-up action could introduce more targeted adjustments — restoring research funding for universities while preserving the department’s essential roles in accountability and best-practice dissemination.
But a surgical fix for charter schools after a sweeping Supreme Court ruling? That’s much harder to envision.
So, CharterFolk, though my strong preference is that SCOTUS wouldn’t go tinkering at all, I’m not going to play Chicken Little here. There are multiple ways this could play out where charter schools emerge unscathed. But if the Court is going to act, it must do so with precision from the outset.
This is why, in the months ahead, we need to be making our case — loudly and clearly:
If the Supreme Court is going to deviate from three decades of charter school jurisprudence, it must be extremely careful. Whatever happens, the school Secretary McMahon visited this week — and thousands like it — must not have their funding jeopardized or their fundamental autonomies compromised. Charter schools occupy a unique space in public education. Any ruling that fails to account for that would be a grave mistake.
The DC Lens: The City at the Crossroads
Few places in the country experience the whiplash of Washington’s policy shifts like Washington itself.
This week, DC’s public schools — charter and district alike — were threatened with a financial hit when the continuing resolution included a massive budget cut for the city.
Then, late Friday, word came that a fix was approved in the Senate …
… and the House is expected to follow suit next week.
For me, this all brought DC’s charter sector back to the forefront of my mind, especially after my recent visit to record WonkyFolk with Andy in front of a live audience.
The next day, I had the chance to visit two charter schools:
Paul Charter School …
… led by Tracy White.
And Washington Latin …
… led by Peter Anderson.
Paul Charter School was born in 1999 when a district school decided to convert to charter status.
It faced fierce resistance from the status quo in the early going with the school district attempting to take the school’s building away from it, and actively misinforming parents in order to dissuade them from enrolling their students at the conversion.
Ultimately, Paul prevailed, and 25 years later, the school continues to thrive. Cecile Middleton, who fought for its creation, is now honored with a historical marker recognizing her contributions.
Meanwhile, Washington Latin — long considered one of DC’s strongest public schools — has expanded to a second campus in response to overwhelming demand. But as so often happens, success has drawn blowback. Detractors criticize Latin for having demographics reflecting all DC residents rather than the subset who enroll their kids in public schools. The irony? The school was part of a successful effort to introduce lottery preferences for low-income students …
… an initiative Peter Anderson himself helped lead.
Even after expansion, demand still far exceeds capacity.
DC as a Microcosm of the National Struggle
The dilemma facing DC’s charter schools mirrors that of the broader movement.
This week, charter schools found themselves standing alongside district public schools, fighting to keep funding intact. But in the long run, our movement can’t afford to be seen as defenders of the status quo — or, worse, as having become part of it.
As I’ve written previously …
… DC is a case study in just how unpublic education in our country has become. From private schools charging $50,000 per year in tuition and admitting only a tiny fraction of applicants to selective-admission ‘public’ schools like School Without Walls …
… arguably the most ironically named school in the country — having similarly low acceptance rates, barriers to access are everywhere.
And then there are attendance boundaries.
This report …
… published since I first wrote about DC in 2020, lays bare how district-drawn school boundaries function as a tool of exclusion. One visual sums it up best:
- The map on the left shows the percentage of students attending “by right” district schools, where attendance is determined by residence.
- The second shows the percentage attending out-of-boundary district schools — many of which are selective-admissions magnet programs.
- The third shows the percentage attending charter schools, where admission is determined by open lottery.
What’s striking is how the northwest quadrant — home to the city’s wealthiest, most White neighborhoods — is overwhelmingly represented in the first map. In other words, the most affluent families benefit from district-run “public” schools that are only public in the sense that they are taxpayer-funded. They function more like walled-off citadels, limiting access based on where a family can afford to live. And they prove the point: Public schools are far more than schools that are just publicly funded.
Meanwhile, the charter sector, which admits students by lottery rather than by address, continues to serve a disproportionately Black student population.
The most recent numbers tell the story:
- 68% of charter school students in DC are Black, compared to 56% in the district-run system.
- The district-run system now serves twice the percentage of white students (16% vs. 7%) as charter schools.
Multiple factors contribute to this trend, but the macro reality is clear:
One set of schools — the traditional district — uses attendance boundaries and selective-admission policies that sort students along racial and economic lines. Those schools have seen a decline in Black enrollment and a rise in White enrollment.
The other set — charter schools — uses open lotteries, and the opposite trend has occurred.
This is why we must be vigilant. It’s not just about preserving funding. It’s about protecting the fundamentally public nature of charter schools in a system that has, in many ways, never become something truly public.
A Call for Something Even More Consequential to Emanate From Washington
At the California Charter Schools Association conference this week, I ran into Allison Fansler …
… now a Senior Advisor to the Equitable Facilities Fund and formerly the President of KIPP DC. I first got to know Allison when I helped unify charter school advocacy groups into what is now the DC Charter School Alliance, led by CharterFolk Board Member Ariel Johnson.
Our conversation started with the upcoming SCOTUS case and the irony that some amicus briefs actually try to make the argument that charter schools’ status as “public” is nothing more than a label.
Then we turned to DC’s charter schools.
I posed the same question I’ve been asking DCFolk of late:
Has the time finally arrived for the CharterFolk of DC to come together to craft a shared vision for the unfinished work ahead — to make our nation’s capital a model for Greatly More Public Education?
Her answer was music to my ears.
Indeed, the time has come.
Can you imagine it?
- Tracy championing conversion charter schools as a key part of DC’s future.
- Peter showing how intentionally diverse charter schools provide great programs for all kids without selective admissions.
- Allison sharing how KIPP continues to grow and spread best practices.
- Ariel stewarding the conversation within the context of a truly representative and politically formidable advocacy organization.
- Dozens of other CharterFolk contributing ideas about how charter schools can lead an evolution of public education toward a fundamentally fairer and more excellent next chapter.
It’s a conversation whose content could ultimately prove more consequential than anything coming out of Washington right now.
Not just a vision for DC, but one that would serve as a national model, inspiring charter school communities across the country to do the same.
And one that would ultimately make the case:
No matter what arguments lawyers might be trying to advance right now, this is not about labels.
Our country has never seen education as public as what is being created by our nation’s charter schools.