As Republicans seek to bring more religion into public schools, the situation for private schools could change.
Republican-leaning states are adding chaplains to district health programs, mandating the Ten Commandments in every classroom, mandating Bible teaching in lesson plans, and increasingly offering Christian education at public school prices.
The new measures are being challenged in court, but if found legal in the future, they could mean big changes to private school enrolments.
“This is all assuming that these things aren’t struck down in court and actually get implemented in public schools, which I think would encourage progressives and generally secular families to choose private schools,” said Neil McCluskey, director of the Cato Institute’s Center for Educational Freedom.
The state of Louisiana was sued shortly after the law requiring the Ten Commandments was signed, and the state-mandated posters were put on hold during the legal battle.
Florida and Texas have not faced lawsuits over their policy changes to allow pastors to work as school counselors, but lawsuits are possible after Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (R) said he would not allow Temple of Satan members to participate in the program.
Oklahoma also has yet to face a legal fight over a new requirement that schools incorporate the Bible into their lesson plans, but a move to establish what would have been the nation’s first openly religious charter school there was rejected last month.
While some argue such a move is clearly unconstitutional, experts agree that now is the right time to push for it.
“That would be a very easy question if the U.S. Supreme Court had not shifted so far to the right. [the laws] will be knocked down […] But the current Supreme Court has not been very hesitant to overturn previous precedent, so it’s hard to say what will happen,” said Kevin Werner, a professor in the School of Education at the University of Colorado Boulder.
“And clearly, that’s what lawmakers think. They think, ‘OK, sure, there’s precedent, but the Supreme Court can easily overturn it,’ and I think they probably will,” Werner added.
If such laws stand and more states follow suit, experts say they could shake up private school enrollment in a variety of ways. Families with students currently attending private Christian schools could decide that public school is an acceptable and much less expensive option. Meanwhile, people who want to avoid Christian indoctrination might flee to private schools.
States that have passed these laws have also supported the school choice movement, with many offering Education Savings Accounts (ESAs) that provide financial benefits to parents to choose educational options outside of their local public schools.
At least five states now have universal ESA accounts, and several other states have enacted some version of the program.
“In the context of the growth of taxpayer-funded private schools, in other words voucher law, […] “When it comes to public schools, I think you could say there’s now an incentive for parents to use taxpayer money to pull their kids out of public schools and send them to private, secular schools,” Werner said.
“I think to some extent it will. How much will depend on how much religion is infiltrated in public schools, but taxpayer-funded vouchers make it easier to drop out. We may see an increase in the number of people dropping out in opposition to religion infiltrating public schools,” he added.
But McCluskey points out that “most private schools tend to be religious.”
“And it’s going to be even more difficult if you’re looking for a secular schooling option because secular schools tend to be independent private schools that are expensive,” he said. “If there’s clearly an increased demand for secular private school options, then I think that at least in the short term, you’re going to see an even greater increase in supply.”
There are approximately 30,000 private schools in the United States, with approximately 5.5 million students enrolled as of 2021.
The largest number of private schools are Catholic schools, accounting for 33.4%, followed by secular schools at 25.5%, and the rest being religious but non-Catholic schools.
“You’re going to see people going from private school to public school,” McCluskey said, “but I don’t think you’re going to see a huge turnover, because a lot of private school students, at least from what I’ve heard, tend to be transferring from public school.” […] “I want a religious education. Not just prayer and reading the Bible, but an education that is permeated with religion in everything.”
Meanwhile, Christian school officials say they encourage some form of religion to return to public schools, but stress their approach is very different.
“I believe that human beings need to be shaped by objective standards of law like the Ten Commandments, but unless we engage directly with students to ground them in the world that God created, all they will learn is content, information or propositional ideas,” said Michael Phillips, president of Smith Prep, a Christian school in Florida.
“I don’t think education, and most Christian educators, think that propositional information is the end of education, so just introducing those elements into, say, public schools, doesn’t mean that public schools are doing information right, because all they’re doing is getting students to memorize information,” Phillips added.
