Partners for Student Success: Nonprofits Deliver Wins for Federal Charter School Program

One of the most complicated, yet rewarding, projects we run in Idaho is our state’s federal Charter School Program (CSP) grant. From 2018 to 2023, Bluum was responsible for Idaho’s $22 million Communities of Excellence CSP grant, which we described as “a statewide consortium led by Bluum designed to foster the development, expansion, and replication of high-quality charter schools in Idaho.”

As part of our 2018 CSP proposal we promised to share widely and open source any, and all, lessons, tools, and processes Bluum developed. We’ve tried hard to stay true to that vision of openness and sharing in all the work we’ve done. We figured taxpayers deserve nothing less.
For this report, we engaged the Denver-based veteran journalist Alan Gottlieb. Alan is a longtime observer and reporter of education and charter school issues and was co-founder and editor-at-large of Chalkbeat.

There is much here to unpack and share. Alan speaks with the leaders doing this state level CSP work in New Jersey, New Mexico, Oklahoma and Idaho. He shares some history, context and insights from national charter school leaders and experts on the CSP grant program.

Nonprofits can serve as worthy CSP partners with the U.S. Department of Education and are well positioned to help lead states in the never-ending struggle to improve schools and learning opportunities for our families and children. This is backed up by the good work reported in Partners for Student Success: Nonprofits Deliver Wins for Federal Charter School Program. We hope this report can help inspire others, while serving as a source of realism for those of us undertaking this work and for those who might be thinking of undertaking it.