The American Center for School Choice and the Commission on Faith-based Schools this week published a thoughtful and thought-provoking report, Religious Schools in America: A Proud History and Perilous Future. Even supporters of public education should be deeply troubled that faith-based schools, which are such an important provider of quality education to many students, including many poor children, are disappearing due to financial stresses and the competition of “free” government-funded alternatives such as charter schools. Faith-based schools are an important example of the religious exercise protected by the Constitution’s guarantee of religious freedom, so their travails should also trouble defenders of freedom.

Note these comments from Peter Hanley’s Call to Action in the report (Hanley heads the American Center for School Choice):

“America is losing a valuable national asset-not because it has become obsolescent, not because the demand for it has disappeared, not because the need for it has been satisfied by other entities, but because we have a misguided public policy that continues to restrict severely parental choice in education and discriminates especially against faith-based schools in favor of all other kinds of schools.

“With the charter and magnet school movements, the variety of public schools available has increased. Parents in select states and areas can choose, for example, language immersion, science and math based, and arts schools to educate their children with the full support of society. But parents utilizing their constitutional right of free expression of religion and seeking a faith-based education for their children routinely are told that the state will offer them no support. Only 17 states have scholarship programs in place that empower parents to choose a faith-based school, and many of those are extremely small and narrowly targeted. . . .

“We believe the time is right to recognize that parents seeking a faith-based school are not second class parents to those seeking a language immersion or science and technology education or any other school in American education. They deserve to be treated as other parents who pay taxes and support American education. Supporting parents to choose whatever school will serve their children and family best, including a faith-based school, is just and does not constitute in any way the government establishing a state religion.”

H.T. Rick Garnett.