Obama's support of charter schools falls short of campaign promise

As a candidate in 2008, Barack Obama made a campaign pledge to increase federal support of charter schools.

Before we get into what Obama did and didn't do, let's go over a little background. The umbrella term "charter school” refers to a range of school types, but they have the following traits in common:
 

• They are public schools with free tuition that don't have to abide by state or school district rules. In practice, this might mean non-unionized teachers, different disciplinary rules, longer school days, and a different curriculum, for example.
   
• Students choose to enroll in charter schools, often with a random lottery process when schools get oversubscribed.
   
• In exchange for freedom to operate independent of typical state or district rules, charter schools have specific performance standards they must meet, outlined in a charter. If the school fails, a state or school district -- whichever authorized the school in the first place -- can close it.
   
• Although they receive public funding, they can also accept private donations.
   
• They are not religious institutions.
   

Charter schools have a reputation for being more innovative and responsive to students' needs than traditional public schools, resulting in better student performance. Some research at universities backs up this belief.

Charter schools are a popular idea among education reformers, including the Republican presidential nominee, Mitt Romney, as well as Obama. Despite independent research that questions charter schools as a panacea for struggling public school systems, both national political parties include charter schools in their education platforms.

What Obama promised was to take an existing grant program under President George W. Bush and double its funding.

The chart below shows that hasn't happened.

The red bar represents funding under Bush in his last year ($208 million). The blue bars represent funding during Obama's time, which did increase by 22.5 percent by 2012. Still, that's a far cry from the purple horizontal line -- the requisite $416 million to fulfill this promise.

The Obama administration also used Race to the Top, a separate competitive grant program for states, to encourage the proliferation of high-performing charter schools. That isn't the same as dedicating money directly to charter schools, but it serves an overlapping purpose.

States stood a better chance of receiving Race to the Top grants if they showed they would hold charter schools accountable for progress on metrics such as students' standardized test scores; give charter schools equal access to funding as traditional public schools; and allow school districts to establish charter schools.

In all, the Education Department has spent about $5 billion through Race to the Top so far, with plans to extend another $550 million to school districts (bypassing states as the middlemen).

This is a case where supporters can call Obama a proven champion of charter schools by increasing funding a bit and critics can say he didn't do enough. As our chart shows, Obama the candidate had an ambitious funding goal about 77 percent bigger than what Obama the president actually accomplished. For that we rate this a Promise Broken.