Assistance program
Charter Schools
$2.1 Billion committed in FY2018–FY2026
- Agency
- Office of Elementary and Secondary Education, Education, Department of
- Assistance
- Project Grants (Discretionary)
- CFDA number
- 84.282
- What it does
- The program supports startup of new charter schools and the replication and expansion of high-quality charter schools. Charter schools increase educational options for parents and students and, in exchange for stricter academic accountability, are exempt from many statutory and regulatory requirements. Funds also support State efforts to improve charter schools' access to facilities.
- Who benefits
- School administrators, teachers, and students and their parents are beneficiaries.
- Who applies
- State entities, including State educational agencies, State charter school boards, Governors, and statewide charter school organizations, in States in which State law authorizes charter schools are eligible. If no State entity in a State receives a grant, charter school developers in the State that have applied to an authorized public chartering authority to operate a charter school, and provided adequate and timely notice to that authority, may apply directly to the Secretary. Charter management organizations with experience operating or managing high-quality quality schools are also separately eligible for grants. Lastly, States are eligible for grants for charter school per-pupil facilities aid programs.
- Authorized by
- Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, as amended, Title V Part C.
Committed by fiscal year
* FY2026 is year-to-date — the fiscal year is still in progress, so its total is still filling in. The striped band and dashed line mark that provisional stretch.
Top recipients
By dollars committed.
How to read these numbers
- Committed through this program
Money committed under this assistance listing (its CFDA program), counted in the year each action happened.
- How it's paid
Most programs pay out one way — a grant, or a direct payment to individuals; the flow bar only appears when a program genuinely mixes types.
- Some recipients aren't itemized
For entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare, the government reports one aggregate instead of naming tens of millions of people, so the recipient roster isn't part of the public record.
- Awards, counted once
An award count is the number of distinct awards with at least one action that year — each counted once, however many times it was amended.
- The colored bars
Every bar on this page splits by how the money moves:
Direct payments