Trump administration reverses policy that threatened SC’s charter school grant funding
The U.S. Department of Education is dropping a regulatory requirement imposed by the Biden administration that had threatened federal grant funding for South Carolina charter schools, federal officials said.
The federal agency announced Thursday that as part of its effort to break down bureaucratic barriers and enhance state and local autonomy the department would no longer review how states approve and monitor groups that sponsor charter schools as a condition of its charter schools grant program.
“This action returns educational authority to the states, reduces burdensome red tape and expands school choice options for students and families,” the U.S. Department of Education said in a statement.
In November, the U.S. Department of Education had dinged South Carolina for what it said was inadequate oversight of charter school authorizers and pressed state education officials to develop new written oversight policies within 90 days or risk losing a $31.5 million federal grant the state has used to support more than two-dozen new charter schools since 2022.
The S.C. Department of Education filed a formal appeal of the order shortly before Christmas, characterizing the demand as “federal overreach,” and vowed to alert “key” members of South Carolina’s congressional delegation about it.
State Superintendent Ellen Weaver celebrated the federal agency’s policy reversal in a statement Thursday.
“What a wonderful breath of fresh air it has been to see the Department of Education under President Trump’s leadership return to respecting state authority regarding our charter school P&I grants,” said Weaver, referring to the Planning & Implementation grants the state distributes with the federal grant money at issue. “This decision will allow states like South Carolina to innovate and expand on high-quality charter schools in our state.”
It’s not clear why federal education officials in the prior administration had concerns about the state’s oversight of charter school sponsors, also called authorizers.
In South Carolina, authorizers can be either local school districts, the Public Charter School District or institutions of higher education.
They receive taxpayer dollars to vet new charter applications, regulate schools they approve and hold accountable schools that fail to live up to their commitments.
The State Media Co. reported last year, as part of a series of investigative articles, how the state’s charter schools law doesn’t address the review and enforcement of college and university authorizers, leaving them to operate in a legal gray area that critics claim can lead to mismanagement and waste.
Biden administration flagged SC’s authorizer oversight
The U.S. Department of Education began contacting states where private entities authorize charter schools in August 2023 to request more information about their oversight practices, emails obtained by The State show.
Over the next 15 months, state education officials communicated with their federal counterparts to clarify the role charter school authorizers play in the state and demonstrate their oversight of them.
Ultimately, South Carolina and Utah were the only two states unable to allay federal concerns about authorizer oversight, a current department official told The State.
As a result, the U.S Department of Education in November imposed a “specific condition” on South Carolina’s federal charter schools grant award.
The condition made the grant’s approval contingent on South Carolina education officials developing and implementing written oversight procedures that demonstrated how the agency would review sponsors’ performance and sanction sponsors that did not comply with authorizing requirements.
A current U.S. Department of Education official, who spoke to The State on background, said the agency reversed the prior administration’s directive in an effort to eliminate unnecessary bureaucratic conditions and empower states.
The official said that so long as states approve private entities to be authorizers, it should be up to those states to determine how those authorizers are regulated, not the federal government.
Had the U.S. Department of Education pulled grant funding for charter schools sponsored by some or all of South Carolina’s authorizers, it would have dealt a major blow to their viability.
The federal money, distributed annually as Planning & Implementation grants, is often the determining factor in whether a new charter school succeeds or fails, said Kevin Mason, executive director of the Public Charter School Alliance of South Carolina.
“This grant is pivotal,” he said. “If you were to look historically at schools in South Carolina that gained approval from an authorizer to open, but did not receive the P&I grant, their success rate would be much lower than the success rate of the group that did receive a P&I grant.”
This story was originally published February 20, 2025 at 1:16 PM.