by Stanley Carlson-Thies

“No Child Left Behind,” the well-intentioned but increasingly criticized federal law for elementary and secondary education, was replaced on December 10, 2015, when President Obama signed into law the bipartisan “Every Student Succeeds Act.” Discussion about the new law mainly concerns the size of the federal role versus state and local responsibilities for education. Less noticed are the gains, and losses, for faith-based education.

Federal law affirms the primary role of parents in directing the education of their children and protects independent—religious, non-religious, home—schooling from federal dominance. But there are significant and positive federal interactions with non-government run elementary and secondary education. In particular, federal law authorizes spending for extra services for students with special needs—and requires that this spending be “equitably” used, that is, that the services be made available to the students whether they are in public or independent schools. Thus, a second grader needing speech therapy should receive this federally funded service whether she attends the local public school or instead attends a Montessori or Jewish school. But these federal funds go first to states and then to local public school districts, and it is those districts that are required to ensure that the special funds are equitably spent, without discriminating against students who attend schools other than those operated by the public school authorities.

The new law—ESSA—modifies how this equitable allocation is determined and administered, so that additional federal funding is available to independent school students and their teachers. Moreover, each state will now be required to appoint an ombudsman to ensure that funding is equitably allocated, and ESSA strengthens the consultative process between public-school officials and representatives of private schools.

ESSA also creates a small new preschool development grant program for states, which is specifically intended to maximize parental choice of preschool programs and to promote collaboration with existing nongovernmental preschool programs as the states expand their involvement in preschool education. Encouraging states in this way not to simply replace independent preschools is particularly important because of the many parents who prefer faith-based or specialized secular early education programs.

Lost in the reformers’ drive to reduce federal standard-setting for local public school districts was an innovative George W. Bush-era opportunity for faith-based organizations to help students in low-quality public schools. In the “No Child Left Behind” scheme, families of students in persistently low-performing public schools were to be offered the opportunity to choose a different public school or to obtain for the students “Supplemental Educational Services” (SES): tutoring from a private organization at the school districts’ expense. The SES program was explicitly open to participation by faith-based organizations, and the federal Department of Education took special steps to encourage their participation, along with secular entities.

Why specifically encourage faith-based providers to offer tutoring to students in troubled public schools? A New York education official said that faith-based organizations can be ideal SES providers because they are “rooted in the communities that they serve” and thus are more likely to be trusted by the families seeking help; because they typically offer a wide range of services, such as abstinence education and health programs, that may also be helpful to the families; and because the faith organizations are often intentional about building “meaningful relationships” with the communities around them, building trust and gaining insight into community needs and community dynamics.

As it happens, the SES program was not a great success, no doubt in significant part because it was up to the troubled local school districts to go against their own interests and inform the families that they could choose a different public school or an independent SES provide (at the district’s expense!). Yet the SES program was a promising idea, using the special qualities of faith-based organizations to contribute to the public good in low-performing public, government-run, schools.

For details on how the new elementary and secondary education act will affect private schools, monitor “Private Schools and the Every Student Succeeds Act,” a publication from CAPE, the Council for American Private Education, which will be periodically updated.