Are Religious Charter Schools Constitutional?

The Supreme Court will soon weigh-in

Thanks to Bill Lee’s unabashed embrace of Christian Nationalism, charter schools affiliated with extremist Hillsdale College are a reality in Tennessee.

A key question – in TN and elsewhere – is can state funds be used to support explicitly religious charter schools?

In Kentucky, the Supreme Court ruled that charter schools are NOT public schools. Period. So, no state funds may be used to support them.

Now, the U.S. Supreme Court is taking up a case on state funding of religious charter schools. An analysis of the key issues includes:

The third issue that the U.S. Supreme Court must address is that it needs to determine whether those who run charter schools are state or private actors. This is because the vast majority of people who run charter schools are private groups. However, these charters are defined by law as public schools and are supported by tax-payer dollars. If the Court rules that those who operate the charter schools are state actors, then because they must be non-sectarian, religious charter schools will be ruled unconstitutional. However, if the Court rules that charter schools are private actors, then religious charter schools will be ruled constitutional.

In Kentucky, the Commonwealth’s highest court found that because charter schools are operated by private actors, they are essentially private schools. In other states, that has not been the case. It will be interesting to see how the U.S. Supreme Court sorts this out.

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An Assault on Public Schools

The Network for Public Education – a nationwide coalition of groups fighting to defend public schools – issued a statement today in light of the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling allowing public funds to be used for private, religious schools.

Here is that statement in full:

The ruling of the U.S. Supreme Court in Carson v. Makin forces taxpayers to fund religious education in states with school choice programs, a radical departure from American values and traditions. With this decision, the Court eradicated the separation between church and state when it comes to public funding for education, opening the door to future decisions that would further mandate the public funding of religious education. Prior to the ruling, states could fund religious education but were not obliged to do so. As Justice Breyer noted in his dissent, “What happens once “may” becomes “must”? Does that transformation mean that a school district that pays for public schools must pay equivalent funds to parents who wish to send their children to religious schools?”

The implications of the Court’s wrong-headed decision are enormous and will certainly be seized upon by radical school privatization advocates. Privatizers have focused on capturing state legislatures and securing judicial appointments to ensure their small minority can bend public policy against high-quality and popular public schools, and today’s ruling further undermines the ability of Americans to protect public education funding.

Students, families, and taxpayers have regularly been saved from problematic, unaccountable, and fraudulent voucher programs through lawsuits citing state constitutional provisions that prohibit direct government aid to educational institutions affiliated with religious organizations. The U.S. Supreme Court has demolished those protections and this will lead to additional voucher programs that will siphon taxpayer dollars from public schools.

Although this case focused on a voucher program, the ruling also opens the door to allow religious institutions to overtly run charter schools, which also have their own long history of fraud, low-quality staff, poor academic performance, and general mismanagement. Given that charters are run by private boards, similar to the boards that run private schools, this precedent paves the way for later decisions for religious charters.

Perhaps most disturbing, some religious schools have a long history of engaging in reprehensible discrimination in both admissions and hiring and in many cases failing to provide adequate and science-based academic instruction. This decision will embolden the creation of more schools, that receive taxpayer funding, to engage in discriminatory practices in the name of religion.

Commenting on the decision, NPE President, Diane Ravitch, stated, “Maine and Vermont should only include the option of public schools in their town tuitioning programs, thus limiting public funding to public schools. Other states that subsidize any private schools should stop doing so. The path on which SCOTUS has embarked will end in publicly funded schools for every religion, of which there are scores. It threatens the principle of the common school, supported by the public and open to all children.”

Carson v. Makin highlights the depth of the current assault on our public schools by a highly motivated and organized radical minority. Even with today’s devastating ruling, their assault will continue to push for even more until all public schools are closed, and every student is left behind.

We will continue our advocacy efforts on behalf of democratically governed public schools opened to all. Public funds are for public schools.


This case has clear implications for Tennessee and Gov. Bill Lee’s plans to privatize public schools:

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The Re-Segregation of Our Schools

tumblr_nz435mE3NM1qgl0t5o1_1280No one talks much about segregation anymore, which is a shame since America (and especially the South) has been steadily been re-segregating its schools over the last few decades. The re-segregation is a consequence of a lot of things, including (chiefly) the Supreme Court’s Seattle/Louisville decision, many districts (like Nashville) coming into unitary status, and a decline in satisfaction with busing.

It turns out (surprise!), that this is not a good thing. There’s a lot of discussion nationally (and locally) about diversity as an important goal, but almost no focus on why it’s so important.

Turns out, diversity (and integration) makes you smarter (and more empathetic, and more well-rounded, and better adjusted . . .). We should be having this conversation, but we aren’t.

Via Scientific American, “How Diversity Makes Us Smarter”

The fact is that if you want to build teams or organizations capable of innovating, you need diversity. Diversity enhances creativity. It encourages the search for novel information and perspectives, leading to better decision making and problem solving. Diversity can improve the bottom line of companies and lead to unfettered discoveries and breakthrough innovations. Even simply being exposed to diversity can change the way you think. This is not just wishful thinking: it is the conclusion I draw from decades of research from organizational scientists, psychologists, sociologists, economists and demographers.

Via The New York Times, “Diversity Makes You Brighter”

The findings were striking. When participants were in diverse company, their answers were 58 percent more accurate. The prices they chose were much closer to the true values of the stocks. As they spent time interacting in diverse groups, their performance improved.

In homogeneous groups, whether in the United States or in Asia, the opposite happened. When surrounded by others of the same ethnicity or race, participants were more likely to copy others, in the wrong direction. Mistakes spread as participants seemingly put undue trust in others’ answers, mindlessly imitating them. In the diverse groups, across ethnicities and locales, participants were more likely to distinguish between wrong and accurate answers. Diversity brought cognitive friction that enhanced deliberation.

The bottom line is that, except for a few isolated cases (good job, Rutherford County!), we’re not taking integration seriously as a lever of reform/school improvement.

We should be.

A version of this post appeared on the Nashville Jefferson tumblr page

Further reading: