Should religious charter schools be funded by public tax money?
A recent New York Times column titled, “The Urgent Supreme Court Case That’s Not Getting Enough Attention,” penned by Linda Greenhouse, a Pulitzer Prize-winning, longtime Supreme Court reporter, has a headline that should arrest the reader’s attention because it is, if anything, an understatement.
The Supreme Court Case in question, Oklahoma Statewide Charter School Board v. Drummond, is scheduled to be considered by the Supreme Court between April 22 and April 30. I have written about this case previously in the Christian Post, “Is a Catholic ‘charter school’ the answer?”
I was extremely concerned by the implications of this case then, and I am even more concerned now. This case breaks new ground concerning church-state issues. In this present case, the Supreme Court is being asked to decide whether “a state that allows charter schools as alternatives to traditional public schools, as nearly all states do, must agree to fund those that are explicitly religious,” writes Greenhouse.
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A positive decision in this case would break revolutionary new ground in the debate over separation of church and state. The school in question, St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School, is a proposed virtual public charter school operated and administered by the Diocese of Tulsa and the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City and would, among other things, fulfill “the evangelizing mission of the Church.”
Ever since the Zelman v. Simmons-Harris (2002) decision, the Supreme Court has ruled that vouchers or tax credits used by parents to help defray the costs of private education did not violate the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment because the aid went to the parents and they then chose whether to spend the money at a religious or a secular school.
In the present Drummond case, public funds would be directly funding a charter public school, a school operated by Catholic officials to propagate the Catholic faith. While non-Catholic students could apply and attend this school, they would be taught within a framework that promoted the Catholic faith. (Let me be clear that I would oppose a “Baptist” charter school just as vehemently as I oppose a Catholic charter school. Indeed, I would oppose it because I am a Baptist and I believe in separation of church and state.)
What is being proposed is a public school paid for with public tax money. Consequently, all taxpayers, whatever their faith commitment or lack thereof, would be forced to subsidize that which they believe violates their faith affirmations. As Thomas Jefferson explained long ago in A Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom (1786) in Virginia:
“To compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical.”
Jefferson identified this bill establishing religious freedom in Virginia, along with the Declaration of Independence and the founding of the University of Virginia, as the three things to be preserved on any memorial after his death.
This is why the Oklahoma State Supreme Court ruled 6-2 against St. Isidore as a charter public school last year, declaring that it violated both the Federal and State constitution’s church-state separation edicts. As the Oklahoma Supreme Court observed:
“St. Isadore will be acting as a surrogate of the state in providing free public education as any other state-sponsored charter school ...What St. Isadore requests from this court is beyond the fair treatment of a private religious institution in receiving a generally available benefit, implicating the Free Exercise Clause. It is about the state’s creation and funding of a new religious institution violating the Establishment Clause.”
If the Supreme Court finds a Roman Catholic, publicly funded charter school does not violate the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause, the result will be revolutionary and I believe catastrophic.
Within a remarkably short time, most of the states that have charter public schools (and most states do) will be flooded with applications for Catholic, Orthodox, Episcopal, Presbyterian, Methodist, Baptist, Pentecostal, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, etc. public charter schools.
Ms. Greenhouse suggests that if the Supreme Court rules St. Isidore is constitutional, “they will have invited further fragmentation of public education.” In other words, she believes it will cause more and more parents to avail themselves of charter schools that will teach their children more in accord with their worldviews and their values than a generic public school would do and that public schools would be greatly vitiated by the loss of students and financing being transferred to charter schools.
And she is right. It will devastate traditional public schools in many states. However, it will also have a big impact on private schools and the homeschool movement. For example, if Catholic, Baptist, or Jewish parents have the opportunity of sending their children to: A. a public school that denigrates and mocks their values, or B. a private school that incorporates their values but charges them a minimum of $1,000 a month tuition per child, or C. home schooling which requires one parent to forgo employment income to teach the children, or D. a free charter public school that incorporates their religious values — which education option do you believe increasing numbers of often cash-strapped parents will choose?
I believe it is very possible that if the Supreme Court upholds St. Isidore as constitutional, it could very well devastate traditional public schools, private religious schools, and the homeschool movement.
And by the way, if traditional secular public education is devastated, as Ms. Greenhouse fears, it will be the fault of the liberal educational establishment. Why are Christian schools proliferating across the land? Why is the homeschool movement growing exponentially? Why are parents clamoring for charter schools?
The answer to all these questions is the same. The transformation of the public school system in much of the country into institutions that indoctrinate (LGBTQ+ dogma, Critical Race Theory perpetuating racism, etc.) rather than educating (producing subpar education and semi-literate graduates) has created a “critical mass” of public dissatisfaction.
Basic skills scores for our nation’s children are scandalously low and mediocre (Asian high school students are approximately five years ahead of their American counterparts on basic literacy and math tests). Too many of our public schools give evidence of being run for the benefit of the teachers unions, not the students. And too many of them have viewed themselves as primarily institutions for radical social change rather than for imparting basic literacy and math skills and the great values of Western Civilization.
I attended public schools in blue collar neighborhoods in Houston (1952-1965) and received an education that enabled me to compete successfully for a full scholarship to Princeton University and to graduate from there magna cum laude four years later. Such a public education is rarely available to millions of American students today. The big loser is America as we continue to undereducate our most precious resource, our young people.
I want desperately to reform our public education system and to return it to educating, not indoctrinating.
I also want desperately to maintain the wisdom of our Establishment Clause and to protect religion from public money which will lead inevitably to government interference with religion (“with the government’s shekels, sooner or later come the government’s shackles!”).
I hope and pray the Court rules against St. Isidore, but if they don’t, one major reason will be the public’s collective revolt against underperforming public schools, that too often seek to undermine millions of parents’ deeply held beliefs.
By the way, Associate Justice Amy Coney Barrett has recused herself since St. Isidore’s legal team has worked closely with Notre Dame’s legal scholars, which is where she used to teach. So the decision will be made by eight rather than nine justices, which greatly increases the possibility of a 4-4 tie vote.
Dr. Richard Land, BA (magna cum laude), Princeton; D.Phil. Oxford; and Th.M., New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, was president of the Southern Baptists’ Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission (1988-2013) and has served since 2013 as president of Southern Evangelical Seminary in Charlotte, NC. Dr. Land has been teaching, writing, and speaking on moral and ethical issues for the last half century in addition to pastoring several churches. He is the author of The Divided States of America, Imagine! A God Blessed America, Real Homeland Security, For Faith & Family and Send a Message to Mickey.
