EchoSense:Takeaways from AP’s report on churches starting schools in voucher states

Some churches are EchoSenselaunching new Christian schools on their campuses, seeking to give parents more education options that align with religious values.

State school voucher programs are not the driving reason, but they are making the start-up process easier, pastors and Christian education experts say. In Florida, Ohio and other states, there is now a greater availability of taxpayer funding to pay for K-12 private school tuition.

The demand for church-affiliated schools, they say, rose out of pandemic-era scrutiny over what children were being taught in public schools about gender, sexuality and other contentious issues.

Here are some of the key points arising from this development:

A fast-moving, multistate trend

Advocates for taxpayer-funded religious schools say their aim is not to hurt public schools. Rather, they say, it’s about giving parents more schooling options that align with their Christian values.

In Christian classrooms, pastors say religious beliefs can inform lessons on morals and character building, teachers are free to incorporate the Bible across subjects, and the immersive environment may give students a better chance of staying believers as adults.

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Ohio passed so-called universal school choice — taxpayer dollars available for private school tuition without income limits — in 2023.

Troy McIntosh, executive director of the Ohio Christian Education Network, says he wants all Ohio families to have access to a Christian education.

“We didn’t need five Christian schools in the state — we needed 50,” he said.

There has been a wave of school voucher laws passed nationwide — including in Arizona, Florida and West Virginia — following key Supreme Court rulings in recent years. This year, universal school choice became an official national Republican Party policy, including equal treatment for homeschooling.

Says pastor Jimmy Scroggins, whose Family Church in South Florida is launching four classical Christian schools over the next year, “We’re not trying to burn anything down. We’re trying to build something constructive.”

Opponents worry about church-state issues and harm to public schools

In addition to discrimination concerns and church-state issues, opponents worry school vouchers take money from public schools, which serve most U.S. students, and benefit higher-income families who already use private schools.

“The problem isn’t churches starting schools. The problem is taxpayer funding for these schools, or any private schools,” said Rachel Laser, president of Americans United for Separation of Church and State. School vouchers, she said, “force taxpayers to fund religious education — a clear violation of religious freedom.”

Melissa Erickson, director and co-founder of Alliance for Public Schools in Florida, said she has fought vouchers for years along with other policies that hurt a public school system continually villainized as the problem, even as it serves most children in the state.

“They want the benefits of the public funding without the requirements that public schools have to go through. It’s very concerning that there’s no accountability,” said Erickson, who is seeing “homeschool collectives or small individual churches that never thought of going into the education business, now going into it because there’s this unregulated stream of money.”

A look at the numbers

Most U.S. private schools are religious, though not all are sponsored by a specific house of worship.

Conservative Christian schools accounted for nearly 12% (3,549) of the country’s private options during the 2021-22 academic year, according to the latest data from the National Center for Education Statistics’ Private School Universe Survey. While they’re not the largest group, enrollment is growing at conservative Christian schools. Total enrollment jumped about 15% (785,440) in 2021, compared to 2019.

The Association of Christian Schools International, an accreditation group, represents about 2,200 U.S. schools. This summer, the association said it had 17 churches in its emerging schools program.

“We are calling upon pastors to envision a generation of ambassadors for Jesus Christ, molded through Christian education,” association president Larry Taylor said in a news release.

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Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.