Charles Mitchell
President & CEO
Charles grew up in the Philadelphia suburbs in a family of railroaders, teachers, and small business owners. He is a graduate of Pennsylvania’s public schools, Bucknell University, the Koch Associate Program, and the Claremont Institute’s Publius Fellowship.
Charles first became associated with the Commonwealth Foundation when he was a college newspaper editor under attack for defending free speech. He became a Commonwealth Foundation investor in 2006, joined the staff as Chief Operations Officer in 2010, and became CEO in 2016. During that time, he has been honored with the State Policy Network’s Overton Award and the Heritage Foundation’s Distinguished Intern Alumni Award and recognized as one of City & State Pennsylvania Forty Under 40 Rising Stars.
In addition to his Commonwealth Foundation responsibilities, Charles serves as an elder of his family’s church, a founder of Threefold Schoolhouse: An Acton Academy, president of the Open Discourse Coalition, and a board member of Americans for Fair Treatment and the Franklin News Foundation.
Charles lives in the Harrisburg area with his wife and their four daughters.
Education
The Lesson of Ohio Might Not Be What You Think
The Wall Street Journal recently featured a very short, very striking piece on the defeat of much-needed limits on the power of government unions in Ohio. The conventional wisdom on…
Media
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School Choice Saves, School Choice Sells
Harrisburg is atwitter this morning as the Senate Education Committee is voting on school choice legislation. Let’s quickly rebut three myths that are circulating: School choice saves money. It’s…
Media
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Want a 70% Approval Rating?
Let’s be real. One of the things that often gets CF into trouble is that from the outside, it seems like we never need to worry about whether the free-market…
Media
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Pennsylvania’s Public Universities Have Indigestion
If you ask them, they'll say they're hurting because budget-slashing Gov. Tom Corbett just forced something nasty down their throats—namely cuts to the subsidies they receive from Keystone State taxpayers. …
Commentary
Read More: Pennsylvania’s Public Universities Have IndigestionRegulation
This Is What a Boom Looks Like
About half an hour ago, I was in Canonsburg, Pennsylvania. (For my fellow natives of the Philadelphia area, Canonsburg is southwest of Pittsburgh, where they say “younse” instead of “youse”…
Media
Read More: This Is What a Boom Looks LikeTaxes & Economy
Who’s Nutty Now?
There’s a ton of chatter out there right now about how nutty the Tea Party is, most recently with 29 percent of voters saying Tea Party members are “economic…
Media
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Penn State’s Smallest Tuition Hike in Years
The conventional wisdom ever since March 8, when Gov. Tom Corbett made his budget address, has been very simple: The sky is falling! How, exactly? In the form of crippling…
Media
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President Obama Is Right
Savor that headline, because you won’t see it on this blog too often. But it’s true. As our friend Lindsey Burke at the Heritage Foundation points out, today at…
Media
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Will the “Year of School Choice” Come to PA?
Today’s Wall Street Journal has an editorial that begins as follows: School may be out for the summer, but school choice is in, as states across the nation…
Media
Read More: Will the “Year of School Choice” Come to PA?Education
Cut Waste at This Temple, and I Will Praise It in Three Days
Temple University just announced that it is raising tuition by ten percent, blaming the new state budget. Temple is an outstanding example of an institution that should have spent…
Media
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Are Tuition Hikes Forced by Cuts in State Subsidies?
Today, the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education (PASSHE) voted to raise tuition by 7.5 percent for 2011-12. Many have tried to place the blame solely on the reduction…
Media
Read More: Are Tuition Hikes Forced by Cuts in State Subsidies?Education
Don’t Fall for the False Choice on Tuition and Taxpayers
I see that right now, our legislators are once again debating cuts to the generous subsidies our public universities receive from taxpayers. Some are claiming that if the cuts pass,…
Media
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The Governor is Right and the Union Bosses are Wrong
I’m in Pittsburgh today, but I can hear the shouting in Harrisburg from here: Union bosses are hopping mad at Gov. Tom Corbett for calling them out in his…
Media
Read More: The Governor is Right and the Union Bosses are WrongEducation
Bad Economists and Good Budget Cuts
Yesterday in the Patriot-News, yet another Penn State administrator campaigned against Gov. Tom Corbett’s proposed cuts to the generous subsidies our public universities receive from taxpayers (many of which…
Media
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Has Penn State “bin Laden” with Speech-Squelching Policies?
Our friends at the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) say yes: The announcement late last evening that U.S. forces had killed Osama bin Laden in Pakistan…
Media
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PSU: Progress Seems Underway
On March 8, Gov. Tom Corbett started a statewide conversation about higher education through his budget address, in which he proposed significant cuts in the subsidies Pennsylvania public universities receive…
Media
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When Bell Bottoms Were Cool…And PSU Charged $675
I just sent the following to a student at Penn State who is writing a paper on Gov. Tom Corbett’s proposed cuts to the subsidies our public universities receive from…
Media
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Provost Spins Unsuccessfully
I used to be one of those people who have Google Alerts set for their names. I’m not anymore, so it’s come to my attention only belatedly that on April…
Media
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On Higher Ed, Will Legislators Choose the ObamaCare Approach?
This week in the Wall Street Journal, columnist William McGurn had an excellent piece on higher education (subscription required). He wrote mostly about federal policy—and on that point…
Media
Read More: On Higher Ed, Will Legislators Choose the ObamaCare Approach?Education
The Really Devastating Thing Would Be a Tax Increase
My wife and I returned to Pennsylvania last year, and boy, are we feeling welcome right now. The warm fuzzies really took over earlier today when my wife called to…
Media
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Can’t Cut, Can We?
While Pennsylvania’s public universities continue to cry poverty, pesky facts keep proving otherwise. Here’s a snippet from a piece by Debra Erdley in yesterday’s Pittsburgh Tribune-Review: Professors at…
Media
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