The U.S. Supreme Court has upheld a ruling by the Oklahoma Supreme Court denying state funds to a Catholic charter school in that state. Because it was a tie vote (4-4, with Justice Amy Coney Barrett recusing herself), it does not settle the question of whether the First Amendment permits state funding of religious charter schools. But we can already evaluate what happens when public funds become available for Catholic education.
Currently, over 22 million American children in more than 30 states have access to programs that financially assist parents who choose religious and other private schools. These voucher and tax credit scholarship programs have expanded rapidly in the wake of pandemic-era school shutdowns. (This spring, Texas passed a new program that may add millions more to the school-choice population, and the U.S. Congress is considering a federal school choice program.)
Legislatures and the Supreme Court are concerned fundamentally with laws—with what Americans can do. But given that the era of public funding for school choice is already here, U.S. Catholics ought to ask different questions. First, if our faith calls us to exercise a preferential option for the poor, how do we live out that belief in the way we advocate for, and implement, school choice? More specifically, does the way we pursue such programs alleviate inequalities or exacerbate them?
In the Jan. 13 issue of The New Yorker, Alec MacGillis analyzed the 30-year evolution of Ohio’s school voucher program, concluding that “an initiative that was promoted for years as a civil rights cause—helping poor kids in troubled schools—is threatening to become a nationwide money grab” by private schools. I have witnessed firsthand the good that public funding for school choice can do for families in marginalized communities, so I see the history Mr. MacGillis recounts in a different light. But his article—and other critiques of how universal school choice might benefit middle- and upper-income families disproportionately—deserves a response.
Ohio established its first state-funded scholarships in 1996 in Cleveland, where 45 percent of children live in poverty, and soon created a second scholarship program to help provide an alternative to failing public schools elsewhere in the state. Families can use state funds to educate their children in any accredited school, including faith-based private schools. In 2023, the state raised income limits for eligibility; now, 96 percent of Ohio children are eligible for the program.
This April, the nonpartisan Urban Institute published a study with powerful evidence that voucher programs have positive outcomes for historically marginalized student groups. Participants in Ohio’s EdChoice Scholarship Program (one of three different public scholarship programs in the state) have gone to college and earned degrees at a significantly higher rate than their peers who opted to stay in public schools. The impact was highest for “male students, Black students, students with below-median test scores before leaving public school, and students from the lowest-income families.”
The authors were also careful to note that the study covered a period in which EdChoice scholarships went mostly to students from marginalized communities, and the effects might be different now that Ohio—like several other states—has made choice funding available to almost all students.
A fuller picture of school choice
Mr. MacGillis’s article does raise some good questions about Catholic schools and choice programs.
First, do Catholic schools serve a public good? Research suggests that Catholic school graduates are more likely to vote and do volunteer work than peers; in Florida, they outperform peers in other private school sectors. Significantly, non-Catholic parents find them valuable; in 2023-24, 21 percent of students in U.S. Catholic schools were not Catholic—up from 3 percent in 1970.
As for public spending, school choice scholarships (and funding charter schools) cause an undeniable increase in state education expenditures. But per-pupil spending on choice scholarships and charter schools is often lower than per-pupil spending in public schools. And when Catholic schools close or consolidate, they can add to public systems’ costs, as parents—particularly those with limited resources—move students into public and charter schools.
Second, do voucher programs effectively“bail out” Catholic schools? No. For example, over a third of the Cleveland diocese’s Catholic schools have closed permanently since 2000—after school choice became available.
School choice funding has exploded across the United States, but Catholic school enrollment has not. Catholic schools currently enroll 1.68 million American students—still below pre-pandemic enrollment of 1.74 million. (Below, I suggest some lessons learned in Cleveland that might address this stagnation.)
Third, how do Black families and other disadvantaged populations view school choice programs? In his New Yorker article, Mr. MacGillis traced public support for religious schools to the South in the second half of the 20th century, when some states provided public funding to white families to attend private “segregation academies” after the Supreme Court declared segregation in public schools to be unconstitutional in 1954. But public funding for religious schools actually goes back much further, to the early 1800s. Black American families sought out private religious schools for their children as early as 1727 in Louisiana and 1828 in Maryland, and in over 70 schools across the United States—including in the South—by the 1920s.
The idea of school choice as a civil rights tool was pioneered in Milwaukee by the civil rights activist Howard Fuller as a way to give low-income marginalized communities the same range of school options that wealthier families have. The hope is that state scholarships can advance equity in places where housing policies have made it hard for many Black, brown and low-income citizens to choose where to live and where to attend public schools.
Despite the flaws in Mr. MacGillis’s critique of school choice, we cannot, as Catholics, dismiss the social justice concerns that he raises. Catholic schools have untapped capacity that can renew whole communities as well as our church. But if they aren’t open in neighborhoods that need them, or if school choice programs end up perpetuating race and class divisions, then we won’t just prove school choice critics right. We will also violate our own faith.
Cleveland’s lessons for Catholic schools nationwide
I work for Partnership Schools, a nonprofit that runs parochial schools serving striving communities; some have been doing this for as long as 156 years. We are in our fifth year of managing schools in Cleveland, where 93 percent of our students are Black, Hispanic or multiracial, and 94 percent of our families have incomes that qualify them for free- or reduced-price lunch. Our experiences offer several lessons that could help others who seek both school choice and social justice.
School choice funding is essential—and insufficient.Catholic schools in Ohio continued to close after school choice was implemented in part because the maximum scholarship amount—$2,250—was far lower than the real cost to educate one child per year. Annual scholarships are higher now—close to $6,200 for elementary school students—but still short of the amount needed to educate students well, particularly those overcoming social and educational disadvantages.
In some states, per-pupil allotments for charter schools are higher, so there may be an argument for converting existing Catholic schools into charters if the Supreme Court eventually allows this. But the regulatory burdens placed on public charter schools can be significant—and may run counter to church teaching.
So even with choice programs that make it easier for parents to send their children to Catholic schools in Ohio and many other states, we must leverage limited public funds with philanthropic investments if we are to equip Catholic schools to serve those most in need of educational options.
School choice programs and religious charter schools challenge us to be even better at the craft of educating kids. Catholic schools can serve a much wider array of students, particularly if we rethink barriers to admission—such as prohibitively burdensome paperwork or academic screening. And if Catholic public charter schools are allowed, they may need to function just the way other public schools do—accepting anyone who applies. In either case, Catholic schools must step up support systems for teachers who might find themselves welcoming more diverse learners—including some students with sizable learning gaps. We must adapt nimbly to serve students with additional needs, such as English-language learners or those with transportation difficulties. But when we do, we will live out more robustly our belief that every child is made in God’s image.
Catholic schools must continue to strengthen communities. The Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate has found that attending Mass as an adult is increasingly correlated with attending Catholic school as a child. Margaret Brinig and Nicole Stelle Garnett at the University of Notre Dame have also found that measures of disorder, such as crime rates, are lower in urban neighborhoods with Catholic schools. Amid national epidemics of social isolation and declining church attendance, our world needs Catholic schools to strengthen communities.
Yet to serve our communities well, we must adapt to the changes in them, and do so with Gospel-inspired inclusivity. For example, one Partnership school in Cleveland, St. Thomas Aquinas, celebrates its 125th anniversary this year. Initially serving mostly Irish immigrants, the school welcomed Black students years before the Brown decision and continued to adapt as the neighborhood changed. It has not only admitted more non-Catholic students, it now opens its facilities to the neighborhood for events like movie nights and helps families connect with community resources.
For other schools, helping to build communities has involved adding Spanish-language resources. And for the Cristo Rey Network of high schools, it has led to a work-study model of education that knits together high school students with professional workplaces for the benefit of both.
When immigrant parishes dominated the American Catholic landscape, our schools frequently inherited communities that came in through the parishes. Now our schools can be places that foster community for both children and their parents, support they may not get anywhere else.
Catholic institutions can help end the racism that has shaped American cities. Like the process of drawing public school district boundaries,school choice programs have been weaponized in the past for racist purposes. We cannot countenance any program that fails to serve all equally—especially in our own Catholic institutions.
St. Thomas Aquinas is now a proudly Catholic and proudly Black institution. But like our other schools on the city’s East Side (and public schools nearby), St. Thomas is less diverse now than it was in the 1950s. It is worth asking ourselves how racism and classism within our communities contributed to the decline of both urban neighborhoods and their Catholic schools—and commit ourselves to creating a different reality moving forward.
Catholic schools in the United States are on the cusp of a new era, one where we can serve more students than we have since the boom years of the 1950s and ’60s. This is a powerful opportunity to live out our beliefs and share them. But it will take changes in our practices and our thinking to meet the opportunities as they evolve.
