This week, the U.S. Supreme Court heard a case that could pave the way for religious charter schools.
Zooming out, the conflict surrounding St. Isidore of Seville Virtual Catholic School’s effort to open in Oklahoma is the kind that’s bound to arise as public education shifts into a new era.
Charter schools allow private organizations to operate public schools that are open to all students and accountable to both parents and the government.
That makes them an essential bridge from the second era of public education, in which school districts ran public education from the top down, to the third, in which parents are free to direct the education of their children and educators design customized solutions for each child.
In the St. Isidore case, the same features that make charter schools an effective bridge place them in ambiguous legal territory.
- The case builds on a series of rulings that helped secure the constitutionality of private school choice.
The legal reasoning behind St. Isidore’s right, as a religious organization, to operate a public charter school was articulated by Notre Dame’s Nicole Stelle Garnett for the Manhattan Institute and echoed from the bench by Justice Brett Kavanaugh.
It builds on a string of recent cases that found Lutheran schools could not be denied access to publicly funded playground equipment and that religious private schools must have equal access to tax credit scholarships and tuition subsidies available to secular schools.
To deny religious groups equal access to these public benefits — or the ability to run charter schools — would amount to “rank discrimination,” Kavanaugh said.
“They’re just saying, ‘don’t treat us worse because we’re religious,’” he said. “And that just seems like a core principle.”
2. A ruling in favor of St. Isidore could put charter school policies across the country in doubt.
For St. Isidore’s supporters, as well as sympathetic justices like Kavanaugh, allowing the school to prevail would simply create more options for students, adding religious charter schools to the menu of educational options.
But some charter supporters disagreed, warning it could put charter schools in jeopardy.
Arguing for the Oklahoma Attorney General, which is challenging the St. Isidore school, Gregory Garre warned that if St. Isidore prevailed, it could upend charter laws in 47 states, plus the federal Charter Schools Program, and it might even threaten charters’ ability to participate in other federal programs, like the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act.
“This is going to create uncertainty, confusion, and disruption for, you know, potentially millions of school children and families across the country,” he said, adding: “If this Court holds that charter schools are not public schools, then there’s a question as to whether children with disabilities who go to charter schools would be covered by the IDEA. And that’s another problem that will have to be sorted out.”
These are legitimate fears.
Lawmakers in states like Massachusetts are looking for new ways to curb the growth of charter schools — and even shut down some of the most high-performing schools in the country. A ruling requiring them to redefine charters as private or open charter operations up to religious entities could hand their opponents another weapon.
It could also prompt some states hostile to the idea of religious charters to require more government officials to sit on charter boards or otherwise entangle them more tightly with the government.
3. The decision may hinge on whether, in what sense, or under which circumstances charter schools are “public.”
Throughout the case, St. Isidore’s supporters have underlined the fact that it’s a private organization, run by a private board.
But others, including the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, have drawn an important distinction: The entity created to run the school is private. But the school itself, approved by the state charter board, is a public institution.
In its friend of the court brief, the alliance points out that supporters of religious charters sometimes blur this distinction by referring to both the school and the organization created to run it as “St. Isidore.”
In his closing rebuttal in favor of the religious charter school, attorney Michael McGinley repeated that rhetorical move when he said it’s “simply wrong that the state created St. Isidore.”
To draw an example from elsewhere in charter school world, KIPP Jacksonville is a private nonprofit organization. But KIPP Jax Impact Academy is a public school, created by the Duval County School Board, which the private organization runs, but which the government created and could close, if, for example, the school does not meet the academic performance requirements laid out in its charter.
It would be simply wrong to say the state created KIPP Jacksonville. But KIPP Impact? Not so simple. The case could turn on how justices iron out that complexity.
Being a public entity under state law purposes helps charter schools finance their buildings with tax-exempt bonds. But if St. Isidore wins this case, the school could be designated a private entity under federal law.
Justice Neil Gorsuch asked attorney James Campbell, arguing for St. Isidore: “Do you have other examples of entities that might be treated as private for federal law purposes but public for state law purposes?”
Campbell did not have a clear example, but he did point to the case of Amtrak. The federal rail network is considered a private entity for some purposes and an arm of the government in others.
4. There are other, more straightforward ways to expand access to religious education.
In a case of strange bedfellows, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson joined the likes of Mike Petrilli of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute and Neal McCluskey of the Cato Institute in suggesting that charter schools were not the ideal mechanism to provide all families with access to publicly funded religious education.
Instead, states can offer scholarships that allow families to access private religious schools.
Oklahoma already provides families access to tax credits they can spend on private, religious education, and also operates a small voucher program for students with special needs.
But right now, funding for these programs is capped and not all students can participate. Allowing all students to access learning environments of their choice through a publicly funded scholarship would allow religious organizations to operate K-12 schools and give families access, without upending existing charter school policies or raising thorny questions about entanglement between religious organizations and public institutions that could follow in St. Isidore’s wake.
In Brief
Charter schools and publicly funded K-12 scholarship programs have historically grown in tandem. When private learning options expand, they push open the window of politically acceptable options. Case in point: Indiana’s new policy expanding charter school facilities funding.
The Middle States Association, one of the nation’s oldest accreditors, is piloting a new initiative aimed at credentialing microschools and other unconventional learning environments that don’t fit the mold of traditional accreditation.
From the zero-sum files: The Seattle Public Schools restricts access to district-operated choice programs as enrollment declines. Los Angeles’s enrollment declines open up thousands of spots in sought-after schools, but families still can’t access them.
Steven Wilson was unfairly ousted as head of a successful charter school network. Now, he offers a compelling critique of the retreat from academic rigor in education reform.
Thanks, in part, to increased productivity fueled by AI, Duolingo is more than doubling its library of available language courses.
So-called teacher preparation programs often don’t prepare teachers for the classroom. A call for educators to help document that phenomenon.
When tutoring is voluntary, students often don’t show up. Nudges to encourage participation can help, but the impact is underwhelming.
Parent corner
A new survey by media research company Nielsen and book publisher Harper Collins says the number of parents who regularly read to their children has fallen by more than a third, from 64% in 2012 to 41% now, The Guardian reports.
One culprit: Parents are less likely to view reading as fun. Books are spinach, and digital entertainment is candy. But on the contrary:
“Being read to makes reading fun for children”, said Alison David, consumer insight director at HarperCollins. “So, it’s very concerning that many children are growing up without a happy reading culture at home. It means they are more likely to associate reading with schoolwork, something they are tested on and can do well or badly, not something they could enjoy.”
Some parents seem to be making excuses.
A third of parents with children aged 0 to 13 reported wishing they had more time to read to their children, and the number of parents saying their children have too much schoolwork to read books has risen significantly, from 25% in 2012 to 49% in 2024. However, 44% of all parents agreed with the statement that “reading books to my child makes me feel close to them.”
That middle stat is perplexing. Time spent on homework has been in steady decline since the ’90s, and is way down since the pandemic. Students should have more time for pleasure reading than ever before.
I’m with the 44%. Reading to our children brings us closer together.
