State receives $28M grant for charter schools

The state has received a $28 million grant to support charter schools.

The federal grant money will be used to develop new programs for existing charter schools based on the successes at Minnesota's highest-performing charters.

"This $28 million will help us place a sharp focus on high quality, it will provide funding to replicate high-performing charters, and to share those best practices across all schools — traditional, public and charters," said Education Commissioner Brenda Cassellius.

The money will also be used to design and start new charter schools, she said.

"Charter schools over 20 years ago were to be the innovative models, the way that we try out new approaches," Cassellius said. "Some of those are working and we need to learn from them."

Cassellius said the grant will also help the state develop a better system to monitor the performance of charter schools.