Good day, CharterFolk.
The Trump administration’s continued dismantling of the Department of Education remains the loud lurch everyone is paying attention to.
And rightly so.
Status quo interests and many advocacy groups stress how they find the changes unlawful.
I have no desire to see the department shuttered, but I have been advising against throwing ourselves on the tracks to protect it.
That said, the shifts announced this week, combined with other funding decisions the administration has made this year, speak to the challenges that could arise should an administration hostile to charter schools come into power.
In the short term, I am not overly worried about shifting the Office of Elementary and Secondary Education, including the Charter Schools Program, to the Department of Labor.
Yes, it would be preferable to have greater assurance of the Labor Department’s current support of charter schools. But a sudden negative turn for charter schools seems unlikely.
Looking ahead, however, the picture becomes more concerning.
- What if OESE and CSP remain within Labor and a hostile or even neutral administration comes into office?
- What happens when CSP is overseen by a second or third tier undersecretary who may not even require Senate confirmation?
- What happens when a Labor Secretary, potentially union aligned or even coming directly from labor itself, sits atop the bureaucracy?
- Do we really think a Robert Reich type figure, as the secretary overseeing CSP, would be inclined to give charter schools a fair shake?
- And in an era when the administration has argued it has the purview simply not to distribute funds it does not want to?
This is how a program we have built over decades ends up in the wood chipper.
Across the country, CharterFolk keep making encouraging progress.
The Florida facilities breakthrough looks like a fundamental one.
We are seeing evidence of academic progress in Texas …
… and Alabama.
Oakland schools are coming together in new levels of partnership as the school district continues to unravel.
Arizona is celebrating 30 remarkable years of progress.
And in Canada, leaders are recognizing that progress in one province should serve as a proof point for the entire nation.
I could go on.
There are some sobering developments as well, but overall, the quieter charter school story right now is one of continued progress.
At the louder federal level, however, it is important to separate long-term signal from short-term noise.
The need for federal advocacy excellence is quickly becoming one of the clearest long-term signals pulsating for those who are properly tuned in.
This is another reason to appreciate the progress the National Alliance is making as it continues to grow into the federal powerhouse we need.
But each of us must do our part to help that progress happen even faster.