Charters are built on the premise that all kids can learn when a culture of high expectations, great teaching and deep relationships with students and families works together to help each child in the school learn and grow.

This year alone, over 30,000 high school seniors in hundreds of high schools across the country that our fund invests in earned over a billion dollars in college scholarships. And close to 100% of them have been accepted and are going to college.

For individual students, this is an extraordinary outcome.“For my family, this scholarship means that all of their support and sacrifice over the years has truly paid off,” said Laythan Davis, who is graduating from Uncommon Schools in Rochester, New York, this year, and headed to Cornell University on a QuestBridge Scholarship.

But it is surprisingly ordinary in a subset of public schools that have created an approach that works year after year. Our hope is that this becomes ordinary in all communities across the country. 

I had a chance to ask four great leaders of these extraordinary charter school networks about their “secret sauce,” and this is what I learned:

At Friendship Public Charter School in the heart of Southeast Washington, D.C., CEO Pat Brantley and her veteran team of educators are not only graduating 100% of their senior class, but also helping students earn more than and acceptance to four-year colleges and universities across the country. Friendship leaders credit their success to creating a school environment where students are exposed early to college coursework, career pathways, internships and real-world experiences that help them see new possibilities for their future. 

From NASA partnerships and architecture mentoring programs to dual-enrollment classes and study abroad opportunities, Friendship students are encouraged to see themselves not only as college students, but as future leaders, engineers, designers and innovators. For many, those pathways are already paying off: Students are leveraging their career training to earn real income while in college, taking on work in their chosen fields that goes well beyond what a fast food job or work-study position might offer. Educators at Friendship often describe the school community as a “village,” one where students are deeply known, challenged and supported long before graduation day. 

Across the country, public charter schools like Friendship are helping students achieve outcomes that often go unnoticed and therefore uninterrogated. We should be looking to these schools for strategies that work, not only in the charter sector but in public schools across the country with similar needs and student populations. 

For example, at DSST Public Schools in Colorado, seniors have earned more than $48 million in scholarships this year alone, while maintaining a 100% postsecondary placement rate for every graduating class since 2008. Each student averaged more than six college acceptances while earning highly competitive national scholarships, such as QuestBridge, Daniels Fund and Posse Foundation scholarships. This success comes from a that begins long before senior year. Students receive individualized advising, support in navigating financial aid and scholarships and access to counselors and educators who help students see college and career success as attainable and expected.

In Chicago, Noble Schools, which serves roughly 10% of Chicago’s public school population, consistently account for over $500 million in scholarships, more than 30% of the district’s annual scholarship dollars. More than two-thirds of Noble seniors are first-generation college students, and the network has built a college-going culture where students are surrounded by counselors, mentors and alumni who help make higher education feel attainable rather than out of reach. More than 1,000 Noble seniors enroll in college each year, many the first in their family to navigate the process. Noble to rigorous academics, mentorship and a strong college persistence model that helps students succeed after high school graduation. 

At Uncommon Schools — a charter network operating in five Northeastern communities — graduating seniors earned more than $29 million in scholarships, while 95% of students were accepted to four-year colleges, continuing a long-standing culture of academic excellence and college persistence for first-generation students. Overall, Uncommon students graduate from college at nearly four times the national rate of their peers. Leaders to long-term alumni support systems that help first-generation students navigate the challenges of college enrollment, persistence, and completion. 

Students like Laythan represent what becomes possible when schools combine high expectations with real support. During high school, Laythan helped build an AI-powered litter detection program, volunteered in his community and launched an eco-friendly clothing business — all while preparing for college as the first student from his school to attend Cornell.

Through dedicated coaching and continued engagement after graduation, Uncommon works to ensure students not only get into college but also earn their degrees.

These stories aren’t just about scholarships and college acceptance letters; they are a call to action. These schools prove every day that excellence is possible and that potential isn’t in short supply: opportunity is.

First, the good news. If you’re a family of four in New Mexico making below about $120,000 a year, . Soon, If you’re a California family of four making under about $85,000 a year, . Soon, if you are a Vermont family of four making under about $53,000 a year, . In the last Congress, both the Build Back Better Act and the Republican (which garnered 14 GOP co-sponsors) included provisions that families making under 75% of their state median income could have child care for… you guessed it, free.

(Note I am intentionally saying “can be free” and not “is free.” We will get to that in a moment.)

This begs a remarkably under-asked question: why? Why should child care be free for some and not for others? If we’re going to draw a line between free and not-free, where does that line get drawn? As the examples above show, lines are being drawn, but in wildly different places. New Mexico uses 400% of the federal poverty line, Vermont uses 175% of the federal poverty line, California uses 75% of state median income. And when did we decide at the federal level that 75% of state median income was the ticket?

The first order question is why anyone should pay at all. Some goods and services—public schools, libraries, fire departments, national defense—have such positive societal benefits that we have determined there should be no user fee. Households and corporations instead pay into those systems through taxes. That is why Bill Gates can send his child to the local public school for free or check out a book at the local library for free, despite obviously being able to pay.

I think sometimes the digression into questions of whether these items fall under the technical economics definition of “public good” or “merit good” misses the point. Sometimes society takes one for the team so that there can be a team. Schools provide, among many other things, a commonly accessible experience and (aspirationally, at least) a common foundation of knowledge and skills. Libraries are enormously important sources of community. It is, on an almost ineffable level, good to know that the fire department will come to my house and the rich guy’s house.[1]

Early care and education is a gray area. Like, ultra-gray. Here’s how gray it is: depending on your child’s age and what type of setting they happen to attend, you may or may not have to pay. Universal pre-K programs—the truly universal ones, like Florida’s and Georgia’s—have no income check. Yet if your child misses the age cutoff by a minute, you’re out of luck. The difference between an August 31st birthday and a September 2nd birthday is the difference between free and many, many thousands of dollars.[2]

I’m going to suggest we need a coherent theory for why people should or should not pay for child care. The shrug-emoji approach makes it difficult to build a compelling case for transformative investments in child care.

Why? Just making child care less expensive for some people, along some seemingly arbitrary lines, falls into the trap of “deliverism.”[3] In , progressive stalwart Deepak Bhargava and colleagues explain why the theory of deliverism, “the presumption of a linear and direct relationship between economic policy and people’s political allegiances,” is wrong. Contrary to popular belief, helping ease people’s wallets—such as through the pandemic stimulus checks or the expanded child tax credit—is not on its own enough to build political will. Instead, Bhargava argues, “policies that deliver economic benefit without speaking to, reinforcing and constructing a social identity are likely to have little political impact.”

This assertion has big implications for child care. It is difficult to make a values-based case for universal provision if you’re focused on chopping up what benefits go to whom and when. Telling a story—you provide value to society, you deserve support in caring for your family so they can thrive, and those people over there are stopping you from getting it—works better when you have a simple way of explaining the benefit. That doesn’t necessarily mean it has to be universally free, but as Canada’s “$10 a Day” campaign shows, it does mean having an easily understood benefit for everyone.

That lack of identity-building can also impact the actual effectiveness of these policies. This is where that “can be free” vs. “is free” distinction comes in. One interesting finding from New Mexico’s expansion of eligibility for free care is that, so far, not that many middle class families are taking advantage. The Albuquerque Journal “about 76% of families receiving assistance are at or below 200% of the federal poverty line.” (Eligibility rose to 400% of FPL as of July 2021.) There are many different reasons for this—just making child care more affordable , and that supply needs to match preferences—but I have a supposition that many middle-class families do not yet see themselves belonging in a child care subsidy program. No one has told them why they do.

Not having an answer to “should child care be free,” and, if not, where should we draw the line?’ is thus becoming increasingly untenable. This isn’t a place where we want a thousand flowers to bloom any more than we want some states choosing to charge various amounts for fire service or middle school.
We need a clear answer that is grounded in philosophically sound reasoning. That path leads toward good politics and good policy.

[1] I won’t pretend there isn’t self-interest there — the fire at my house can spread to the rich guy’s house, and to be sure the fire truck coming to poorer areas. But you get my point.

[2] This schism is present even in major Democratic policy proposals like Build Back Better, which would have made pre-K free for three-and four-year-olds, but instituted a sliding scale for younger children and for care of pre-K aged kids outside of traditional hours. No one I’m aware of has made a detailed defense for why that should be the case.

[3] Based on conversations I’ve had with some of those involved, it’s worth noting that the Department of Health and Human Services’ oft-cited “7 percent of income” line for “affordability” did not come about out of some unimpeachable methodology but was intended more as a general guideline. In fact, HHS used to say that affordability was 10 percent of income; the line itself is malleable.