The North Carolina Department of Public Instruction’s (NCDPI) Office of Charter Schools has applied for a grant from the U.S. Department of Education to help increase access for educationally disadvantaged students to high quality public charter schools. The proposal is a product of strong collaboration between NCDPI, the NC Charter Schools Advisory Board, and public charter school advocates, including the NC Public Charter Schools Association and NC Parents for Educational Freedom.
The proposed $30 million, three-year federal grant would enable NCDPI staff to provide competitive planning and implementation subgrants to support the start up of additional high quality public charter schools, particularly in communities where educationally disadvantaged students in the local school district are performing disproportionately lower on state academic performance measures.
NCDPI also would provide dissemination subgrants that would leverage the experience of current leaders in the NC public charter schools community who have demonstrated success in helping educationally disadvantaged students grow academically, sometimes very rapidly. These subgrants would support the successful leaders in spreading practices that have been producing excellent results.
The proposed subgrant programs’ primary goals are to:
- increase the number of educationally disadvantaged students being served by high quality public charter schools;
- improve the academic performance of educationally disadvantaged students; and close academic achievement gaps between educationally disadvantaged and educationally non-disadvantaged students; and
- raise the overall academic achievement for North Carolina’s public schools.
NCDPI staff submitted the grant application on May 31, and hopes to hear by late summer/early fall regarding whether the state will receive the award.
For more information, please contact NCDPI Communications at 919.807.3450.