The Dallas Morning-News looks at the growing number of charter schools with religious affiliations in Texas. Making up 20% of all charter schools in the state, and 6 of the most recently approved 7, these publicly funded institutions are raising significant church-state challenges, both for the religious organization and the state trying to administer oversight.
Charter schools are public schools run by private groups and approved by the State Board of Education. They are freed of many state rules. But they must adhere to the state's accountability tests and maintain a separation of church and state. Religious groups may apply to open a charter school if they establish a separate nonprofit to receive state funds.
Even with a middleman, heavy overlap exists between the school and the religious group that supports it. Dozens of Texas charter school leaders or board members hold prominent positions in the church, where the schooling sometimes takes place. Parochial schools reinvent themselves as charters, often with little guidance on running a public school. And the mission of the school itself typically stems from the values of the religious group.
Given that the publicly funded school must not advance or promote religion, a reasonable question is the one asked in the piece by Texas Freedom Network spokesman Dan Quinn, essentially: even if allowed, why would a religious group want to run such a school? As we have seen in other cases, even those in which the focus is a cultural rather than religious identity – a Hebrew charter school in Florida, a Middle Eastern school in Minnesota – maintaining that boundary can be difficult. (The ACLU is currently suing the Tarek ibn Ziyad Academy in Minnesota for violating the Establishment Clause.)
