The U.S. Supreme Court has set an April hearing for a landmark case that could pave the way for religious charter schools.
Catholic dioceses in Oklahoma received state approval to start an online charter school. The state high court blocked them, but federal justices agreed to hear an appeal.
The case of St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School could hinge on a question that has been the subject of under-the-radar legal battles across the country: Whether charter schools count as government actors.
That question has spawned the kind of esoteric definitional debate that is inevitable during public education’s current paradigm shift. New education institutions are forming that challenge old definitional boundaries. What once were bright lines are starting to blur.
St. Isidore and its supporters say the school clearly does not count as an extension of the government.
In a friend-of-the-court brief, the Manhattan Institute argues the Oklahoma Supreme Court erred when it held charter schools were government actors.
“Here, Oklahoma did not direct, coerce, or influence St. Isidore’s educational programming,” it argues. “Indeed, the state’s charter-school system is explicitly designed to expand educational choice by providing ‘additional academic choices,’ and the State does not design or approve school budgeting decisions, curriculum, or operating policies and procedures.”
It adds: “Governments partner with nearly countless private groups to serve important public goals—often with the state’s extensive financial support. But that does not turn private charities into arms of the state.”
The National Alliance of Public Charter schools, on the other hand, argues those claims miss something important about the essence of charter schools. A private organization partners with the government to create a new public school.
The organization that runs the school remains private — a point the alliance itself has stressed in matters of employment law — but the charter school itself “reflects a public-private partnership where the resulting institution remains a public entity for constitutional purposes.”
The alliance points out that the school and its allies refer to both the private organization and the school itself as “St. Isidore,” blurring the boundaries between the public school and its private operator. It also argues the court doesn’t need to resolve these issues to decide the case.
These seemingly byzantine questions will keep coming up as America public education moves into a new era, in which parents select where and how their children learn, and educators are free to create options that meet their needs.
Allowing private groups to create public charter schools is one legal mechanism that helps reconcile the assumptions of public education’s second era (government control of schools) with the demands of the new one (families’ choosing the best education for their child, educators’ freedom to create diverse options).
Charter schooling has created some enduring and highly effective institutions. They will continue to play a vital role in diverse education ecosystems.
But chartering may not be the ideal mechanism to achieve everything families and educators demand in the third era, including access to religious education. Other mechanisms, including, perhaps, the robust individual education tax credit in St. Isidore’s home state of Oklahoma, may be better suited to that task.
In Brief
Local zoning regulations are another area where esoteric definitional questions like what counts as public and what counts as a school are limiting new education options.
If St. Isidore prevails, America’s education landscape could start looking more like those of other Western nations.
America’s retreat from Christianity may have slowed, a new Pew report finds.
Idaho Gov. Brad Little has signed into law an Oklahoma-style individual education tax credit, akin to an education savings account with less oversight of individual transactions.
For the first time, a majority of Texas House Republicans support a new education savings account program.
A French student reflects on an international retreat from high academic expectations: “While it’s true that teachers’ beliefs about their students matter, it’s not their fault that they work under systems—their teacher preparation program, their school district, their state—that have historically neglected to set a high bar for students.”
The latest episode of Sold a Story brings a cautionary tale about state agencies deciding what counts as “evidence-based” reading instruction. “Approving programs, making lists. We’ve tried that before in this country. And it kind of backfired. And it might be backfiring again.”
While declining enrollment is often a fiscal threat to school systems, it can also be a boon, leaving more tax dollars per student, a new EdChoice report shows.
Hearing from readers is always a boon.
