Though Missouri Education Commissioner Dr. Chris Nicastro and her staff worked hard and fast to put Missouri in the running for federal Race to the Top millions, there was one benefit to Missouri’s application that was missing: strong charter school expansion.

The Children’s Education Council of Missouri has the full story HERE.

The Race to the Top application included an increased accountability component for Charter schools, but misses this opportunity to put in a strong push for the expansion of Charter schools. That is partially because Missouri has a geographic cap on Charters specifying that they can only operate in Kansas City and St. Louis.

Charter schools are an important tool in our state’s goal of educating all students, because they can offer alternative models, focused curriculum and different environments for students who are not achieving their potential in a traditional school. This can be as simple as getting a child involved in hands-on projects to accommodate a different learning style, or as complex as language immersion or helping drop-outs re-enter their education and get a degree. Charters have a unique ability to target specific problems in education, and they can often help traditional public schools learn from that targeted approach and adopt best practices.

Giving every district in Missouri access to that opportunity for innovation and community involvement is one of the principle ways that we can compete against other states: many with strong charter school laws that they are hoping to build upon. Without that key component, we not only set ourselves up to be less competitive for this narrow grant objective, but we set our children up to have fewer opportunities and advantages.