Lawmaker: Allow charter schools

DAYTON (AP) — Ohio should end a moratorium on new charter schools so the state can compete for additional federal stimulus money, a GOP state lawmaker said.

State Sen. Jon Husted of Kettering said Friday the state’s limits on charter schools may prevent it from competing for money from President Obama’s $4.35 billion Race to the Top grants. The grants are considered the largest amount of discretionary funding K-12 education in the nation’s history.

U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan recently wrote in an opinion piece that states that cap the number of charter schools “will be at a competitive disadvantage.”

Dangling the promise of the grants, Obama has pressured states to embrace his ideas for overhauling the nation’s schools, ideas that include performance pay for teachers and charter schools. To get the money, state officials may have to do things they, or the teachers’ unions, dislike. But in a recession that is starving state budgets, the new “Race to the Top” fund is proving impossible for some states to resist.

Already, seven states — Tennessee, Rhode Island, Indiana, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Colorado and Illinois — have lifted restrictions on charter schools so they can compete for the money.

Husted does not favor the economic stimulus plan that Congress approved earlier this year under President Obama’s leadership. But he said Ohio, which has roughly 300 charter schools that educate roughly 88,000 children, should make sure it can compete for the money.