Good morning, CharterFolk.
Today we are pleased to share with you a Contributor Column from Greg Richmond, the Superintendent of Schools for the Archdiocese of Chicago.
We provide a bio for Greg below.
Greg Richmond is the Superintendent of Schools for the Archdiocese of Chicago. From 1994 to 2005, he worked in the Chicago Public Schools where he launched the district’s Charter Schools Office. In 2000, he co-founded the National Association of Charter School Authorizers and served as its founding board chair. From 2005 to 2019, he served as its Chief Executive Officer. He is a Senior Fellow at Future Ed and an Aspen-Pahara Fellow. He is also a lifelong Catholic and son of two school teachers, one who taught in public schools and one who taught in Catholic schools.
Are Religious Charter Schools a Good Idea?
Much of the debate about religious charter schools has centered on whether it is constitutional for states to prohibit them. I’d like to ask a different question: Is it a good idea?
I ran the charter school authorizing office in Chicago for ten years, led the National Association of Charter School Authorizers for 15 years, and served as the chairman of the Illinois State Charter Schools Commission for four years. So I know a bit about the regulation of charter schools. For the past 4 years, I have been the Superintendent of Schools for the Archdiocese of Chicago, which includes nearly 200 Catholic schools in Chicago and its suburbs. So I also know a little (truly, a little) about religious schools.
Are religious charter schools a good idea? I ask from the perspective of religious schools themselves and the families they serve, not the perspective of advocacy organizations, their donors, and constitutional lawyers. While there are pros and cons, I believe the greater weight of the argument rests with the conclusion, “No, it is not a good idea for religious schools to be charter schools.” They will do more harm than good.
My reason for that conclusion is partly religious and partly not.
Here’s the religious part, from which I will speak from my experience as a superintendent of Catholic schools.
Catholic schools are not an agnostic network of private schools that happen to be operated by the Church. They are a ministry of the Church and faith is hardwired in. We require our principals to be Catholic. While we do not require every teacher to be Catholic, we require them to teach the Catholic faith, faithfully. While we do not require students to be Catholic (and about one-fifth are not), we do teach religion classes and have students attend weekly Mass. We start school days with prayer. Students go on spiritual retreats. We celebrate Catholic saints and Holy Days. We have Christmas Pageants, not Winter Solstice Pageants, where kindergartners dress up as Mary, Joseph, Wise Men and an assortment of camels, donkeys, and angels.
We are not trying to convert our non-Catholic students into Catholics, but we are trying to introduce all students to God’s love and to deepen their faith. You may not be Catholic or like Catholicism, that’s fine, but this is who we are and what we do. Many parents, both Catholic and not, desire a Catholic school education for their children. And it would all be jeopardized by charter school status.
Could a Catholic charter school require its principal to be Catholic or start each day with prayer? Maybe, but a public charter school certainly could not.
Could a Catholic charter school terminate a teacher who announced to his class that he is an atheist? Maybe, but a public charter school certainly could not.
Could a Catholic charter school student who refuses to attend Mass receive a detention or be required to pay a fine? (My own son, now an adult, racked up quite a few JUGs – “Justice Under God” – fines in his Catholic high school for various and repeated rule infractions.) A public charter school could not.
Each of these questions, and more, would first be considered by a religious charter school’s authorizer. In almost all cases, that is a public board staffed by public employees. These public boards (usually elected officials, aka politicians) and public employees might be Catholic or another Christian denomination or Jewish or Muslim or Buddhist or atheist. That’s as it should be.
But they most certainly are not in a position to evaluate the religious merits of a religious charter school’s actions. And whatever they might conclude about a religious school’s actions, those decisions will be litigated.
If an authorizer permits a religious charter school to terminate an atheist teacher, that teacher will file suit. If an authorizer does not allow a religious charter school to give a detention to a student who refuses to attend a prayer service, the school will file a lawsuit.
Again and again, the terms of the operation of a religious charter school would be determined first by authorizers and then by courts, but not by adherents of a faith. And when that happens, what does it even mean to be a “religious” charter school?
Religious charter schools, I believe, would become a lite version of the real thing – they look like a religious school on the outside but are watered down inside.
That’s the religious reason to be concerned about religious charter schools. Here’s the non-religious reason. While charter schools have more operational autonomy than district schools, they have less autonomy than private schools. Any religious school that goes the charter route will lose the ability to operate the school in the way it believes to be most effective. From the school calendar to standardized tests to teacher credentials and more, government regulations of charter schools are not minor. Almost none of the nearly 200 Catholic schools in our system have the administrative capacity to handle these regulations. They would be crushed by them. Or, rather, to not be crushed by them they would need to ramp up their administrative staff.
Beyond bureaucracy, we have seen more and more authorizing boards become hostile to charter schools over the years, issuing short-term renewals, imposing unreasonable conditions, or simply denying schools that were serving students relatively well. They did not take these actions because those charter schools were religious (because they were not religious) and there will be nothing to stop those authorizing boards from taking similar actions against religious charter schools.
There is one reason, and I think only one reason, why a religious school would become a charter school: money. While funding of charter schools is typically 80% of the funding for district-run schools, I estimate that the funding of charter schools is 50% to 100% more than most religious schools.
If we were to convert our Catholic schools in Chicago into charter schools, we would likely double our funding overnight. Educators could be paid better. Curricula and equipment could be updated. Facilities could be renovated. The temptation would be great.
But as every charter school operator will tell you, public funding doesn’t cover the costs of the public mandates and regulations that come with it.
If (or rather, when) the Supreme Court rules to allow religious charter schools, each existing religious school will need to decide for itself whether the extra money that comes with charter school status is worth the extra regulations, extra politics, and diminished religious liberty. Some will take the deal and some will not.
During the years that follow, those that took the deal will have better facilities and newer curricula and equipment. From the outside, they will look better to prospective parents who are interested in a faith-based education for their children. But those schools will also experience the creeping loss of their autonomy.
Those religious schools that do not go the charter route will experience the opposite. They will be free of the politics and regulations that come with charter schools. They will retain the ability to run their school in ways that are faithful to their faith. But they will not have the new facilities, curricula, and equipment that the religious charter schools could purchase. From the outside, they will look inferior to prospective parents who are interested in a faith-based education for their children.
Over time, enrollment in religious schools will shift toward those that take the money and away from those that do not. Toward those that take the additional regulations and politics and diminished religious autonomy, and away from those that do not.
If your goal was to harm existing religious schools – to pull them into politics, increase government regulation, and diminish their enrollment – religious charter schools would be a great strategy.
When an idea harms the very thing one is wishing to help, it is not a good idea. So, while religious charter schools may seem to make sense to some advocacy groups, donors, and lawyers, I believe it is not a good idea for religious schools to become charter schools.