Tag Archives | religious education

Anti-Muslim bigotry has no place in school voucher debates

By
On April 3, 2012 in Catholic education, Parental Choice, Religious education

When it comes to school choice debates, Muslims are the latest religious group to be singled out for fear mongering. Anti-Muslim bigotry, often an undercurrent of opposition in recent tussles over private school vouchers, surfaced last week in a state that appeared to be on the verge of taking school choice to the next level.

Kansas state Rep. Bill Otto tried to convince his legislative colleagues to send a tax credit scholarship bill back to committee because he worried about the potential expansion of Islamic schools. “What kind of schools might we develop?” Otto said, according to the Topeka Capital-Journal. “Schools that may or may not agree with your values or my values.”

Otto, a Republican, didn’t persuade his colleagues on that particular proposal. But the bill went down 55-66, and political observers in Kansas say his concerns were not unique.

Obviously, they’re not confined to Kansas either. Or to any one political party. (Or just to vouchers and tax credit scholarships. In Tennessee, a group concerned about Islamic influence is backing a bill that would limit the number of foreign workers a charter school can hire.)

Voucher critics occasionally rile up blogs and news story comment sections by hyping angst over Muslim schools. About a year ago, W.C. Gentry, a Duval County (Fla.) School Board member, expressed concerns about Muslim schools while discussing his opposition to tax credit scholarships in a radio interview.

“Now there’s nothing wrong with Muslim schools,” said Gentry, a Republican who is also a member of the Save Duval Schools board of directors, “but people need to appreciate when you start taking public money and giving it out to these various entities it’s going to go all over the place and maybe some places that you really wouldn’t want it to go.” Continue Reading →

Read full story · Comments { 1 }

What other nations are telling us about educational diversity

By
On February 14, 2012 in Catholic education, General, Parental Choice, Religious education

This essay was first posted at the CLR Forum by the Center for Law and Religion at St. John’s University School of Law.

In a recent column for the New York Times, David Brooks argued that a healthy society requires a “thick ecosystem” in which diverse organizations create a rich “spiritual, economic and social ecology.” He contrasted this with an abstract, rule-based “one-size-fits-all” approach favored by government technocrats. He wrote, “Technocratic organizations take diverse institutions and make them more alike by imposing the same rules. Technocracies do not defer to local knowledge. They dislike individual discretion. They like consistency, codification and uniformity.”

Brooks’s contrast applies to public education: America favors technocratic uniformity, while most other liberal democracies prefer a diverse ecosystem.

Here are a few examples of diverse educational ecosystems from other countries. Some good sources on this are Helena Miller’s work on Jewish schooling; Salisbury and Tooley on international comparisons; and Glenn’s Contrasting Models.

  • New Zealand has three different categories of schools: state-sponsored schools, state-integrated schools, and fully independent schools. They receive differing amounts of government funding and a commensurate level of state regulation.
  • Four Canadian provinces (British Columbia, Alberta, Manitoba, and Quebec) allow 50 percent of total per capita costs to follow children to the school of their parents’ choice. Alberta also grants some funding for families who home school. Continue Reading →

Read full story · Comments { 0 }

Retracing America’s path away from pluralism

By
On February 13, 2012 in Catholic education, General, Parental Choice, Religious education

This essay was first posted at the CLR Forum by the Center for Law and Religion at St. John’s University School of Law.

Let me begin with a thought experiment. Suppose that a majority of parents in a school district wished their children to have a traditional curriculum that included Latin, The Norton Anthology of American Literature, sentence diagramming, advanced mathematics and experimental science. Also suppose these parents wanted the teachers to have subject matter instead of education degrees. Suppose, further, they wanted the philosophical framework of their children’s schooling to be Modern Orthodox Judaism. Finally, suppose that these parents agreed to comply with the district’s regulations for school facilities, extracurricular activities and student-teacher ratios, and to surpass the district’s academic standards.

Would the district fund the new school? No, because the United States’ educational system was not designed to allow this kind of diversity.

This comes as no surprise to most Americans. But they might be surprised to learn that this is in sharp contrast to virtually every other liberal democracy. In England, for example, if such parents provide 15 percent of the capital costs, Central Government contributes the remaining 85 percent and also funds the ongoing operations of the school. In the Netherlands, the new school would be funded on an equal footing with the Muslim, Catholic, Montessori, and Anthroposophic schools down the street.

Continue Reading →

Read full story · Comments { 0 }

The ‘technocrats’ need not fear religion

By
On February 8, 2012 in Catholic education, General, Parental Choice, Religious education

U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius didn’t set out to make life hard on Catholic hospitals, and it is not difficult to imagine why a guardian of health would come down on the side of contraception. But New York Times columnist David Brooks makes an enticing point as he examines how technocrats, to use his term, tend to cower from complexity and run from religion. He sees those same behaviors tying President Obama in knots on school vouchers.

Wrote Brooks:

“The administration’s policies on school vouchers and religious service providers are demoralizing because they weaken this ecology by reducing its diversity. By ending vouchers, the administration reduced the social intercourse between neighborhoods. By coercing the religious charities, it is teaching the faithful to distrust government, to segregate themselves from bureaucratic overreach, to pull inward.”

The communities that a young Barack Obama organized are deeply tied to the church, and those church leaders provide a form of social ballast. Indeed, one of the reasons most of the private schools participating in voucher or tax credit scholarship programs across the country are faith-based is that one of the missions of these schools is to help children who are in social or financial or educational need. That aligns with the mission of most of these private-option programs.

Florida is certainly an example. The Tax Credit Scholarship is available only to students whose household income qualifies them for free or reduced-price lunch, or 85 percent above poverty, and the actual average income this school year is only 12 percent above poverty. In turn, roughly four-fifths of the 38,375 students this year attend faith-based schools.

That these schools are tied in some way to religion can indeed give technocrats serious pause. They think of a wall that is supposed to separate church and state, and forget that the Establishment Cause was prompted by fears not that the government would cooperate with religions but that it would allow for only one. We’re a pluralistic nation, and the participating Florida schools make that point emphatically:  Of the participating religious schools, 36 percent are nondenominational, 17 percent Catholic, 16 percent Baptist, 5 percent Seventh Day Adventist, 3 percent Pentecostal, 3 percent Jewish, and the rest representing at least nine other faiths.

These schools are a snapshot of our communities, just as Catholic hospitals are a part of the medical landscape. As long as the government isn’t forcing children to attend them and as long as the options are religiously diverse, then technocrats have nothing to fear. In fact, there is a persuasive constitutional argument that the government can’t offer options that exclude religious ones. More importantly, these kinds of learning options strengthen the public education quilt by adding pieces of community fabric that sometimes can play a constructive role in helping disadvantaged children learn. That’s certainly something community organizer Barack Obama can appreciate.

Read full story · Comments { 0 }

Too many liberals are on the wrong side of the school choice debate

By
On December 19, 2011 in Charter Schools, Education and Public Policy, General, Religious education, School Choice

We liberals see our public schools as the centerpiece of America’s “melting pot” society. Religiously divisive societies like Northern Ireland and Lebanon worry us. Teachers unions are generally applauded as providing needed job protection for committed professionals who are helping to shape the lives of our children. These beliefs combine to cause all too many liberals automatically to oppose school choice plans that would enable more low-income families to choose religious or other private schools for their children. That’s too bad, and it need not be that way.

Liberals certainly think that our society should pay special attention to the needs of low-income families, often non-white families. And it is clear to everyone that all too many of the children from these families are now poorly served by conventional public schools. To remedy this problem, liberals typically put their faith in the internal reform of public education. In the meantime, however, liberals with means seem content for other people’s children to remain stuck in public schools that they would never tolerate for their own children.

Lots of low-income families also are committed to public education, and if their local schools are bad, their focus is on making them better. But other low-income families would like to choose something else for their children. Surely liberals are predisposed to respect the judgments of all families, rich or poor, as to what they believe is in the best interest of their children.

Encouragingly, in large parts of America, school choice has now become a central feature of public education. Charter schools, magnet schools, inter-district transfer programs, and the like all enroll children on the basis of family choice. A number of school districts have even converted their entire enrollment system into a family choice plan that no longer bases assignment on the location of the family’s residence. Well-to-do families have traditionally been able to “choose” their children’s public schools by deciding where to live — especially in upper-income suburban enclaves which offer good public education to which low-income families are realistically denied access. The newer sorts of public school choice arrangements provide wider opportunities to low-income families, and liberals like President Obama support them.

Charter schools may threaten teachers unions, and they are often managed by entrepreneurs, sometimes even profit-making organizations. But they are still public schools — open to all (by lottery, if applications exceed seats available), free of charge, and free from religion.

This is exactly the problem, however, for low-income families who want faith-based schools for their children. School choice programs, such as Milwaukee’s voucher program and Florida’s tax credit scholarship program, target these families. Through them, tens of thousands of families now can opt for something they could not otherwise afford. Most other wealthy nations also subsidize that sort of choice. Yet, American liberals are the most outspoken opponents of such plans.

This stance is inconsistent with fundamental liberal beliefs. Liberals are all for “choice” when it comes to abortion and want the government to pay for abortions sought by poor women. Why can’t more liberals see the desirability of fully extending choice to low-income families when it comes to education?

Some liberals persist in arguing that “common” public schools are necessary because they are society’s way of transmitting democracy and tolerance to everyone. This is a romanticized picture of what actually happens in public schools. Moreover, America’s private schools don’t teach intolerance. To the contrary, research shows that their students become as or more tolerant than their public school-going counterparts. Indeed, it is the closing off of private schools to those who cannot afford them that interferes with parents’ fundamental exercise of their free-speech rights when they are unable to select the educational values their children are taught.

Contrast America’s system of higher education. The federal government provides “Pell Grants” to low-income students regardless of whether they attend public or private colleges. The great private universities all provide additional tuition assistance to low-income applicants and many of the best admit on a needs-blind basis. It is left to students and their parents to decide whether or not they wish to attend a faith-affiliated college.

Liberals who personally care about religion and who send their children to religious schools often seem indifferent to the religious beliefs of parents who are too poor to make the same choice for their children. Giving vouchers or tax credit-funded scholarships to children from low-income families should be a “free exercise” issue with civil liberties organizations. Instead, these programs are miscast as an “establishment” of religion. But the right kind of school choice plan no more breaches the “wall of separation” between church and state than does the current income tax deductibility of contributions to religious organizations.

Of course, school choice by itself is not a “silver bullet” that will magically cure all our educational woes. But school choice plans can help low-income families obtain something they want for their children that even the most liberal charter school plan cannot provide — religious education. My wife and I are not religious and we never sent (or wanted to send) our daughter to a religious school. But we could have afforded it if it had been our family preference. I consider myself a liberal, and I find it anything but liberal to automatically oppose choice plans that could empower low-income families to select for their children from among the options I had for mine.

Read full story · Comments { 4 }

School choice as a moral imperative

By
On April 1, 2011 in Charter Schools, Education and Public Policy, General, Parental Choice, Private Schools, Religious education, School Choice

At the edge of the campus of the University of California, Berkeley, there is today unfolding a conference that has brought together advocates for school choice of varying ideological stripes. There are some participants who support public school choice among charter academies but who are skeptical of the success of publicly funding private learning options. There are those who back private options for the social justice they bring to disadvantaged families but who have issues with the free-market embrace of universal vouchers.

But City University of New York professor Joseph Viteritti, one of the nation’s most legitimate experts on educational administration and one of the most devoted students of school choice as social justice, opened the session with the glue that bound everyone together. It is fundamentally indefensible, Viteritti said, to confine a child to one education option only because our public policies challenge or even prohibit a choice of varied learning opportunities.

The opportunities defining today’s discussion, titled “May Superman Pray?”, are those that enable a choice among faith-based schools. Viteritti, for one, defined as a moral imperative the chance to choose among religious institutions if it allows a family who could not otherwise afford such an option if it wanted to raise their children according to their value system. Furthermore, Boston University educational historian Charles L. Glenn said, “It is a fundamental right of the citizenry to decide how you’re going to educate your child.”

This was not a partisan conference, and its participants went to great lengths to illustrate this point. The conference was sponsored by the Berkeley-based American Center for School Choice, which is chaired by law professor John E. Coons, one of the nation’s most liberal voices for parental choice — particularly private choice — in education. One panel featured both Cato scholar Andrew Coulson and former Democratic California Sen. Gloria Romero. “I believe in public education,” said Romero, the California director of Democrats for Education Reform. “But I don’t believe only the rich should have school choice.”

But can Superman (a play off the documentary “Waiting for Superman”) pray? Most of the participants agreed he should, but they’re not aligned on how he could. Some would advocate extending school choice to families who want to benefit from the unique identity of a faith-based school. Others, such as Glenn, believe the voucher war is unwinnable and would take the admittedly risky approach of allowing a religious school to become a charter school while still maintaining its religious identity.

The threat of the Blaine Amendments in the states had brooded over the conference like the Holy Ghost. So how do our public policies fulfill the moral imperative of choice even for our most disadvantaged families? Tax credit scholarships may survive a legal threat, some, such as Coulson, said. But not every state has a tax code that could create a viable system of educational choice. The Supreme Court has given us guidance on navigating the Establishment Clause of the U.S. Constitution with its 2002 decision in Zelman vs. Simmons-Harris, but the Blaine threat is much more pervasive for many states considering these options.

These questions aren’t new, but the American Center for School Choice is to be commended for drawing the debate away from the margins and toward the center of our discussion over education reform. Whatever divides our approach to the schoolhouse door, it is either misguided or politically calculated to define the discussion as anything other than a moral imperative.

Read full story · Comments { 2 }