OK not OK with Faith-Based Charters
Next up: SCOTUS and, hopefully, state legislatures
With America’s growing demand for school choice and growing need for high-quality, accountable options, adopting faith-based charter schools could be the most sensible next step in K–12 education reform. And yet, sadly, too many are bound and determined to stop that from happening.
That is how I begin a new piece I have running over at National Review. I first wrote about the theoretical possibility of faith-based charters 15 years ago, and I’ve been trying to make the case since.
This week, the Oklahoma Supreme Court (responding to the nation’s first attempt at turning the concept into a reality) held that faith-based charters violate the state’s and the federal constitution.
I explain why I believe the court got three big things wrong: 1) It failed to appreciate that states adopted chartering to create a new non-governmental sector of public education; 2) It failed to recognize the myriad ways state laws differentiate charters from district-run schools, and therefore it mistakenly considers charters “state actors,” and 3) It failed to appreciate that chartering is just like the government programs in Trinity Lutheran, Espinoza, and Carson—meaning states can’t single out faith-based groups for exclusion from government activities.
Please take a look at my article for more on these points and my belief that the US Supreme Court will eventually reach a conclusion opposite to Oklahoma’s court.
But this is a column about governing not courts. I feel strongly that judges need to cast a smaller shadow over policymaking and that we need strong legislatures.
That’s why the end of my piece is about state legislatures taking up the issue of faith-based charters. We need public, democratic deliberation about the key issues at the heart of this matter. We need our elected representatives engaging in these tough subjects, negotiating with one another, and reaching conclusions.
In short, in the not-too-distant future I suspect SCOTUS will make faith-based chartering possible. But that will be the start, not the end, of the discussion. How faith-based chartering will work—funding, enrollment, staffing, accountability, and more—will be, should be, a matter for our legislatures.
I hope they start to work on this now.
