Some churches are opening recent Christian schools on their campuses to provide parents with more educational opportunities that are consistent with religious values.
While state education voucher programs are not the main reason, they do make the startup process easier, pastors and Christian education experts say. Florida, Ohio and other states now have more tax dollars available to pay for private school tuition from preschool through high school.
In her opinion, the demand for church schools is the result of a critical debate during the pandemic about what children are taught in public schools about gender, sexuality and other controversial topics.
Here are some of the key points that emerge from this development:
A rapidly progressing trend in several countries
Supporters of taxpayer-funded religious schools say their goal is not to harm public schools, but rather to provide parents with more schooling options that are consistent with their Christian values.
In Christian classrooms, pastors say, religious beliefs can enrich lessons in morals and character building, teachers have the freedom to incorporate the Bible across subjects, and the immersive environment may augment students’ chances of remaining believers as adults.
Ohio has introduced so-called universal school choice in 2023 – tax money is available for tuition at private schools with no income limit.
Troy McIntosh, executive director of the Ohio Christian Education Network, says he wants to provide access to a Christian education for all families in Ohio.
“We didn’t need five Christian schools in the state – we needed 50,” he said.
In recent years, a number of school voucher laws have been passed across the country — including in Arizona, Florida and West Virginia — following key Supreme Court rulings. This year, universal school choice became an official policy platform of the Republican Party, including equal treatment for homeschooling.
Pastor Jimmy Scroggins, whose Family Church in South Florida plans to open three classical Christian schools next year, says: “We don’t want to burn anything down. We want to build something constructive.”
Opponents fear problems between church and state and damage to public schools
In addition to concerns about discrimination and church-state issues, opponents fear that school vouchers would take money away from public schools, which most U.S. students attend, and benefit higher-income families who already attend private schools.
“The problem is not that churches are starting schools. The problem is taxpayer funding of these or other 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 the Alliance for Public Schools in Florida, said she has been fighting for years against education vouchers and other policies that harm a public school system that is constantly portrayed as the problem, even though it serves most of the state’s children.
“They want the benefits of public funding without meeting the requirements that public schools have to meet. It’s very disturbing that there’s no accountability,” said Erickson, who has seen “homeschool communities or small individual churches that never thought about getting into the education business are now doing it because there’s this unregulated flow of money.”
A look at the numbers
Most private schools in the United States are religious, although not all are supported by a particular church.
Conservative Christian schools accounted for nearly 12% (3,549) of the nation’s private offerings in the 2021-22 school year, according to the latest data from the National Center for Education Statistics’ Private School Universe Survey. Although they are not the largest group, enrollment at conservative Christian schools is increasing. Total enrollment increased by about 15% (785,440) in 2021 compared to 2019.
The Association of Christian Schools International, an accrediting organization, represents about 2,200 U.S. schools. This summer, the association announced that 17 churches were represented in its Emerging Schools program.
“We call on pastors to envision a generation of ambassadors for Jesus Christ shaped by Christian education,” association president Larry Taylor said in a press release.
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Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s partnership with The Conversation US and a grant from the Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.
