Catholic Charter School Draws Ire of Charter Advocates

Oklahoma case could lead to country’s first religious charter school, even though some leaders oppose the concept

 A legal battle over a proposed charter school in Oklahoma could unlock a new avenue 
for religious education—and some of the fiercest opposition is coming from within the 
existing charter-school movement.

The Oklahoma Supreme Court recently heard arguments over whether to allow a publicly 
funded, expressly religious Catholic charter school, which would represent the 
first of its type in the nation. 

State laws have long barred such schools. Supporters, including conservative lawyers
 and religious-education advocates, call those laws discriminatory and say they run 
afoul of recent U.S. Supreme Court rulings. Some observers expect the issue to eventually
 reach the high court. 

If the effort to allow religious charters is successful, it could open up school 
options for some parents, redirect public money to support religious instruction
 and upend the charter-school movement and publicly funded education more broadly. 

wsj.com - Charter school religious schools oklahoma

When someone tells you why charter schools are such a good idea, see if you can do a thought experiment with them.

Ask if they think Education is a good thing. If it’s a good thing for society. OK so far?

So now we know education is a “public good”. It’s there on a par with, say, roads and courts and access to water, and so on. Maybe having mail delivered. Electricity, even. Anyway, let’s take roads:

Everybody should have access to roads, right? Suppose you’re super wealthy and want to have roads just for yourself and your rich friends. Is that OK? Well, if you want to pay for them yourself and construct and maintain them, I suppose that’s OK. How about if you want to take the money that’s supposed to go for “everybody” roads and divert it to “roads just for you”. Is that OK? Why not, because you’re impoverishing the public good roads for your private use roads? And eventually, if you convince enough of your rich friends, you will have some really swell roads that only you can drive on, while the “everybody roads” will be run down, without enough money to maintain them, and it will be hard to build new ones to serve new areas or replace failing ones.

That’s charter schools: you divert public monies into schools for only some people, and (and this is important) you take money away from all the other schools to do it .

Worse, now, in Oklahoma, we’re taking money from everybody to start schools run by and on behalf of a particular religion. Is this a good idea if Muslims want to start doing this? Orthodox Jews? Sikhs?

Put religion where it belongs, in churches for church loving people. Don’t spend my money building churches, or schools, or graven images on walls, or bibles, or indoctrinating the little kiddies unless you want to pay for it yourself. Period. (Actually, I think that “indoctrinating” is a form of child abuse, but it will be a long time before I get that point across to most people.)