Kathy Jamil, the principal of an Islamic school in Buffalo, N.Y., has a suggestion for anyone who balks at the inclusion of Muslim schools in school choice programs.

KathyJamil

Please, come visit.

"This is something that I wish I could just get on a soapbox and just shout at the top of my lungs,” Jamil told redefinED in the podcast attached below. Before passing judgment on Muslim schools, she said, “We hope that those who have fears … would take the opportunity to get to know them."

Anti-Muslim bigotry is a small but steady undercurrent in school choice debates. In the past year alone, it surfaced in Alabama, Tennessee, Kansas and a handful of other states. In the most-publicized example, a state lawmaker in Louisiana said she regretted supporting that state’s new voucher program because it could wind up promoting Islam.

Jamil is chair of the Islamic Schools League of America, an associate of the American Center for School Choice (which co-hosts this blog) and a member of the new national Commission on Faith-based Schools. Given the atmosphere, she believes school choice in America is particularly important for Muslim families.

“You find that Muslim children oftentimes – and their families for that matter – feel intimidated or afraid to openly practice their faith. So we find that some students in the public school setting will not tell their classmates or their friends, or be openly Muslim if you will,” she said. “This is challenging for any child, because now you have to play these two roles. You’ve got this duality going on, where at home or in your faith tradition, community center - wherever it is that you feel safe in terms of practicing your faith - you can act Muslim. But in the public school sector, you’ve got to avoid being Muslim at any level. This duality is very difficult for children. It’s very unhealthy.”

“We need to help children reconcile how they can practice their faith and how they can further solidify their commitment as citizens of America,” Jamil continued. School choice helps them “bridge those two worlds.”

It’s another persistent myth about expanding school choice: Ethnic and religious groups will retreat into walled-off camps that are more insular and intolerant. Society will splinter. Democracy will crumble.

Rabbi Moshe Matz offers a polite rebuttal. “The reality is that an educated population is bound to be the force for greater democracy and greater embracing of unity in a society,” Matz, a school choice stalwart in Florida, says in the redefinED podcast interview below. “Look around. Tyranny always feeds off the uneducated.”

Rabbi Matz

Matz, 39, is director of Agudath Israel of Florida, which represents roughly 100 rabbis and synagogues. In 2010, he was literally front and center when 5,000 people marched in Tallahassee to support an expansion of Florida’s tax credit scholarship program. Last school year, 27 Jewish schools participated in the program, with 778 students on scholarship.

Matz’s comments are especially timely now. Conversation about school choice in the Jewish community spiked a bit in the spring after a provocative op-ed in the Wall Street Journal by author and pundit Peter Beinart. Jews in America could strengthen Jewish identify by shoring up Jewish schools, he wrote – and vouchers would be vital to that effort.

The past few months have also seen a steady stream of anti-Muslim comments in school choice debates, including a state lawmaker in Louisiana who said she regretted voting for that state’s new voucher program because she now fears it will promote Islam. Matz called such comments unfortunate and a distraction.

“The argument can’t stray away from the real issue here, which is parental choice,” he said. “Concerns like this are going to be out there, like they are probably for many other choices that parents are going to make for what’s the best education for their child. But ultimately, I think that you can’t allow these types of things to distract us from the ultimate goal.”