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Carol Burris: Another Religious Charter School Applies for Public Funding in Oklahoma, Backed by For-Profit Corporation

By dianeravitch
December 1, 2025 //
13

In this post, Carol Burris reviews the latest challenge to separation of church and state. A religious school has applied for public funding as an online charter school. But that’s not all: the religious school is a tentacle in the vast for-profit empire of the Florida-based Academia charter chain.

Carol Burris is the executive director of the Network for Public Education (NPE). She was a teacher and principal in New York State and was designated as Principal of the Year. She is an expert on the charter school sector. She follows the money, studying federal records, state records, and financial reports. She has posted numerous reports, which can be found on the website of NPE.

Burris writes:

After the first bid for an online religious charter failed in Oklahoma, we were told it would not be the last. True to that promise, the National Ben Gamla Jewish Charter Foundation has informed Oklahoma’s statewide charter board that it plans to seek public funding for an online high school serving roughly 40 students to start. According to Peter Deutch, who filed the letter of intent, a complete application is expected to be submitted before the end of the year. While owning a residence in Florida, Deutsch has lived in Israel for more than a decade.  

Ben Gamla Charter Schools were founded in 2007 by Deutsch under the nonprofit umbrella of the National Ben Gamla Charterschool Foundation Inc. Students receive instruction in Hebrew language and learn about Israeli culture and Jewish history during school hours. Religious teachings (such as prayers or Torah study) are offered as optional programs after school hours. According to this 2013 article in the Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA),

About 150 students mill around for a few minutes before heading back to the classrooms. They are followed by Orthodox rabbis with dangling tzitzit fringes and black-velvet yarmulkes pushing carts laden with prayer books and snacks.

Within a few minutes, the kids are chanting morning prayers — even though it’s afternoon and until a few minutes earlier, the classrooms had belonged to a taxpayer-funded public school.

That’s because Ben Gamla’s lease on the building lapses at about 2:15 p.m. Mondays through Thursdays. For the next two hours, the classrooms are taken over by a religious Jewish after-school program.

From the beginning, it was widely understood that Peter Deutsch’s goal in launching Ben Gamla was to create a publicly funded alternative to Jewish day schools, which charge tuition and are often financially out of reach for many families. Deutch is not shy about using his charters to promote Jewish communal purposes. He made it clear to the Times of Israel that, “He wants to give Jewish kids who otherwise would attend public school an opportunity to be in a Jewish environment and develop a Jewish identity — at taxpayer expense. The Hebrew curriculum includes Israel education and Jewish history, and most of the schools are located on Jewish community campuses. Some 85 percent of the students are Jewish. Supplementary after-school religious programs take place onsite or nearby.”

Now, Deutsch appears to be abandoning even the pretense of maintaining a secular framework, creating a new nonprofit that includes “Jewish” in the foundation name. His new vision would effectively erase the boundary between public education and religious instruction, pushing the model well beyond the constitutional line that Ben Gamla once claimed to walk carefully around.

But Ben Gamla’s story is even more complicated than above. Since its beginning, Ben Gamla charter schools have been run by a for-profit corporation—the largest for-profit charter management corporation in the United States—Academica.

Ben Gamla and the For-Profit Academica

To understand how deeply Academica’s involvement with Ben Gamla reaches, one need only examine the network’s earliest tax filings. The first available IRS Form 990—filed in 2009 for the 2008 school year, when the original Hollywood, Florida campus was the only Ben Gamla school open—lists the organization’s address as 6361 Sunset Drive in Miami, the location of Academica’s offices at the time. By the 2011 submission, Academica had moved to 6340 Sunset Drive, Miami. That address then appears as the Ben Gamla address on the Foundation’s subsequent 990s.

The overlap goes beyond shared office space. Those early tax forms were signed and submitted by Academica’s longtime Chief Financial Officer, underscoring that from the very beginning, Academica was not merely a vendor or service provider—it functioned as the operational and administrative engine behind the Ben Gamla charter school network.

The Ben Gamla Foundation’s address at 6340 Sunset Drive is still listed on the latest public 990.According to the latest Foundation audit, Academica provides both “academic and administrative services, including, but not limited to, facility design, staffing recommendations, human resource coordination, regulatory compliance, legal and corporate upkeep, maintenance of the books and records, bookkeeping, budgeting, financial reporting, and virtual education services.” Personnel in the school work for another for-profit ADP, which appears as the personnel vendor for many Academica-run schools. 

But that is not all. The audit lists the following Academica-related corporations as having received finance lease agreements and lease liability payments for its Hollywood and North campuses in 2023: North Miami Lakes Campus, LLC, Van Buren Facility, LLC, and Hollywood Educational Annex, LLC. These corporations, located at the same address as Ben Gamla and Academica companies and affiliated charter chains, are three of scores of real estate arms of the for-profit. 

During the 2023-24 school year alone, the Ben Gamla Charterschool Foundation, Inc. paid Academica and what the audit terms as “its affiliates” $3,413,317.00.

The relationship between the for-profit Academica and charter schools is repeated across the nation: Academica’s “brands” are nonprofits that hold charters and get taxpayer funds, including federal CSP grants, while Academica, for all intents and purposes, runs the schools. 

Other Academica-affiliated charter brands beyond Ben Gamla include:

• Somerset Academy, Inc. – A large charter school network (founded 1997) that partners with Academica. It encompasses roughly 80 schools across Florida, Nevada, Texas, and Arizona, with a small international presence inSpain.

• Mater Academy, Inc. – A Florida-based chain (founded 1998) supported by Academica, and started by Academica’s owner, Francisco Zulueta. Mater Academy has grown to 44 charter schools in 3 states (primarily Florida and Nevada, with recent expansion to Texas). 

• Doral Academy, Inc. – A charter school network (founded 1999) affiliated with Academica and originating in Doral, FL. It operates 16 schools across six states – Florida, Nevada, Colorado, Idaho, North Carolina, and Texas. 

• Pinecrest Academy, Inc. – A charter network under Academica’s umbrella, founded in 2000. Pinecrest Academy operates 26 schools in Florida, Nevada, and Idaho.

• Sports Leadership & Management (SLAM) – A specialized charter school network focusing on sports-themed academics, co-founded by artist Pitbull in partnership with Academica. Since the first SLAM opened in Miami (2013), the network has expanded to multiple campuses. SLAM schools are located in Florida, Georgia, Nevada, and Texas. 

• CIVICA – A newer Academica-affiliated charter network focused on career and civic leadership academies. It began with the City of Hialeah Educational Academy (COHEA) in Florida and has grown into the CIVICA Network operating schools in Florida, Nevada, and Colorado.

• International Studies Charter Schools, Inc. – A boutique network of multilingual college-prep charters in South Florida supported by Academica in Florida. 

• Independence Classical Academy: Academica’s latest brand of classical virtuous charter schools, with schools opening in Colorado and Nevada.

Nearly all of these chains have an Academica-supported online school. In addition, Academica provides both national and international for-profit virtual education. And it operates colleges associated with its charter chains in Florida. All of this is tied together neatly by the for-profit here.

Implications for Religious Charter Schools

To believe that Peter Deutsch—who resides in Israel—and the National Ben Gamla Jewish Charter Foundation, which he created, are seeking approval to open a virtual religious charter school in Oklahoma without the quiet support and coordination of Academica is simply naïve. Fewer than 0.1% of Oklahomans identify as Jewish. No one launches a niche virtual religious charter in that context unless a far more powerful operator is standing behind it. 

And Academica is nothing if not opportunistic. When CTE schools became trendy, Academica created the Civica chain. When “classical education” surged in conservative states, it launched the Independence charter network. Whenever a new market emerges—no matter how small, remote, or ideologically charged—Academica is there to plant a flag.

Academica likely brings in billions each year through its vast ecosystem of charter schools, real-estate deals, management fees, and related-party businesses. But for Academica, enough is never enough. The possibility of religious charter schools—publicly funded, lightly regulated, and ideologically branded—is not just appealing. It’s a gold mine. 

Some will insist this new online religious charter will be “independent.” It will not be. The pattern is already documented. As far back as 2013, the Fordham Institute—itself a charter school authorizer—admitted as much. When a Ben Gamla governing board attempted to fulfill its legal duty to operate independently from the Foundation and Academica, it was swiftly shut down. The Institute’s candor in its commentary confirmed what insiders already knew: independence is tolerated only until it interferes with the chain and its operator’s control. From that report:

“But it seems this local board took its job too seriously. Peter Deutsch, the founder of the Ben Gamla network and a former Congressman from South Florida, told the Tampa Bay Times that the local board ended up making all the decisions about the school. The foundation, he said, wanted more control.”

If the Oklahoma Virtual Charter Board approves this application when filed and the case ultimately reaches the U.S. Supreme Court, the challengers won’t just be arguing before a bench that includes Amy Coney Barrett. They will also confront the power behind an established charter chain whose own governance and for-profit entanglements make the point more clearly than any brief could: charter schools—despite what their advocates claim—are not truly public schools in most states at all.

Categories Charter Schools, Education Industry, For-Profit, Oklahoma, Privatization, Religion, School Choice, Separation of church and state

Kristi Noem Blocks Catholic Priest from Holding Communion for ICE Detainees

By dianeravitch
October 12, 2025 //
11

This is an extraordinary video, showing ICE-DHS employees turning away a Catholic priest who wanted to hold communion for ICE detainees. These are people suffering a cruel fate. Why not allow them the comfort of their religion?

https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZP8AamTnq/

Consider that the Supreme Court has been using the freedom of religion guarantee of the First Amendment to tear down the “wall of separation” between church and state and to legalize discrimination against gays.

Why then is is legal or acceptable for ICE to refuse to allow religious freedom to detainees?

Categories Cruelty, Democracy, Ethics, Evil, Religion, Separation of church and state, Shame, Trump

John Thompson on Ryan Walters, MAGA Zealot

By dianeravitch
September 26, 2025 //
7

After raising a national profile by taking MAGA ideas to absurd extremes, Ryan Walters resigned yesterday, going out in a blaze of ignominious display.

John Thompson explains:

For months, I’ve been hearing predictions that State Superintenent Ryan Walters would not serve out his term. Originally, the rumors had to do with the questionable legality of his actions. Recently they have focussed on the Republicans, who once supporteded him,  but who are now fed up with his antics.

Since I submitted this piece, yesterday, Walters said “he is ‘excited’ to step down and accept his new position. He said his goal is to ‘destroy the teachers unions.’”

Walters announced he will become the CEO of the Teacher Freedom Alliance (which says it has 2,748 teachers enrolled.) He proclaimed:
“For decades, union bosses have poisoned our schools with politics and propaganda while abandoning parents, students, and good teachers. That ends today. We’re going to expose them, fight them, and take back our classrooms,” said Walters in a press release. “At the Teacher Freedom Alliance, we’re giving educators real freedom, freedom from the liberal, woke agenda that has corrupted public education. We will arm teachers with the tools, support, and freedom they need, without forcing them to give up their values. This is a battle for the future of our kids, and we will not lose.”

Below is background information on how Walters got to this point.

Introducing her first podcast on Oklahoma State Superintendent Ryan Walters, the Atlantic’s Hannah Rosin notes the long history of public schools being attacked for cultural and political reasons. Then, she recalls:

What’s been happening to American public schools lately is different: more coordinated, more creative, and blanketing the nation. Pressure on what kids learn and read is coming from national parents’ movements, the White House, the Supreme Court.

Rosin further explains that Ryan Walters “has pushed the line further than most.” 

Walters recently announced an ideology test for new teachers moving to Oklahoma from “places like California and New York.” And, although the Oklahoma Supreme Court has issued a temporary stay on Walters’ standards, he’s “tried to overhaul the curriculum, adding dozens of references to Christianity and the Bible and making students ‘identify discrepancies in 2020 elections results.’”

The first of two podcasts review how Walters has “already succeeded in helping create a new template for what public schools can be.” Part two will go even deeper into how “Walters and a larger conservative movement seem to be trying to redefine public schools as only for an approved type.” As he said, “If you’re going to come into our state … don’t come in with these blue-state values.”

Rosin starts with Walters’ “Office of Religious Liberty and Patriotism,” and his claim, “For too long in this country, we’ve seen the radical left attack individuals’ religious liberty in our schools. We will not tolerate that in Oklahoma.” He said this in a video sent to school administrators who were supposed to play it for every student and every parent.

This mandate, however, is the opposite of his approach when he was an award-winning “woke” middle school teacher. Rosin interviewed two of Walters students, Shane and Starla, about his “parodies,” that were called, “little roasts.”

Shane, a male conservative, compared Walters’ “little roasts,” such as “Teardrops on My Scantron,” to those of Jimmy Kimmel.  

Starla, a lesbian. said of her teacher, “He was woke! (Laughs.) He was a woke teacher.” And she praised his teaching about the civil rights movement.

Rosin reported that today’s Ryan Walters is “unrecognizable” in comparison to the teacher they knew.  And, “Shane compared it to how you’d feel about your dad if he remarried a woman you didn’t like.”

In 2022 , when running for State Superintendent, pornography was Walters’ issue. He strongly supported HB 1775, which was a de facto ban on Critical Race Theory. It forbid teaching things like, “an individual, by virtue of his or her race or sex, is inherently racist, sexist or oppressive, whether consciously or unconsciously.” 

Walters’ top target was a high school teacher, Summer Boismier,  who, in response, covered her bookshelves with butcher paper. But she also posted a QR code for a Brooklyn library, which had books that Walters said were pornography.  Boismier resigned, but Walters successfully asked the Oklahoma State Board of Education to revoke her teaching certificate. He said, “There is no place for a teacher with a liberal political agenda in the classroom. Ms. Boismier’s providing access to banned and pornographic material to students is unacceptable and we must ensure she doesn’t go to another district and do the same thing.”

After being labeled a pedophile, Boismier started to get serious threats. Then the Libs of TikTok started a campaign against alleged gay teachers who were supposedly “groomers,” prompting bomb threats.

Then, as Rosin explained, “state Democrats called for an impeachment probe, and Walters leaned in harder.” For instance, Walters ramped up his campaign against teachers unions who he called a “terrorist organization.”

Walters also claimed that a “civil war” was being fought in our schools.

Rosin reported on how Walters gained a lot of attention “when he said teachers could cover the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre, where white Tulsans slaughtered hundreds of Black people, but they should not, quote, ‘say that the skin color determined it.”” 

Then, “Walters accused the media of twisting his words. He said that “kids should never be made to feel bad or told they are inferior based on the color of their skin.”

Trump responded on Truth Social, “Great job by Oklahoma State Superintendent Ryan Walters on FoxNews [sic] last night. Strong, decisive, and knows his ‘stuff.’” And, “I LOVE OKLAHOMA!”

There was pushback when it was learned that “one of the few Bibles that met Walters’ criteria is the “God Bless the USA Bible.” It was “endorsed by Lee Greenwood and President Trump. It sells for $59.99.”

As the first part of the podcast came to an end, it reviewed Walters’ recent setbacks. 

The U.S. Supreme Court  stopped Oklahoma’s plan for  the nation’s first publicly funded religious charter school. The Oklahoma Supreme Court has paused the Bible plan. And the special test by Prager U. for teachers from California, New York, and other “woke” states, faces legal challenges.

And Walters was lambasted after sexually explicit images of naked women were seen on a screen inside his office.

Part two will give Walters a chance to tell his side of the story. Rosin previews his response by quoting him: “Yeah, they’re outrageous liars.”

Categories Accountability, Bigotry, Ethics, Extremism, Oklahoma, Religion, Separation of church and state, Union

Ryan Walters, Oklahoma’s Firebrand State Superintendent, Resigns

By dianeravitch
September 25, 2025 //
6

Ryan Walters announced that he was resigning his elected post as Superintendent of Schools in Oklahoma announced he is resigning. He plans to dedicate himself to fighting teachers’ unions.

Only two days ago, Walters told the local NPR station that he wanted every high school in the state to open a Turning Points USA chapter in its school.

The State Attorney General lambasted Walters.

Walters spent most of his energy promoting evangelical Christianity in the public schools. He wanted Bible-based lessons, the Ten Commandments in every classroom, and prayer in the schools. He was an outspoken MAGA guy and tried to insert doubts about the 2020 election in the social studies curriculum.

The final straw may have been the time recently when Walters conducted a meeting with members of the State Board of Education in his office and two attendees saw pornography on his television screen. Walters meanwhile had been ranting about pornography in school libraries.

Good riddance!

Categories Accountability, Disruption, Extremism, Oklahoma, Religion, Separation of church and state

Tom Ultican: Christian Nationalism Comes for the Schools

By dianeravitch
August 5, 2025 //
17

In this post, Tom Ultican focuses on the advance of Christian nationalism. This is the belief that the U.S. is a Christian nation and that the Founders supported that idea.

In response to Christian nationalists, states are passing laws to require the posting of The Ten Commandments in classrooms, to allow public money to be spent in religious schools, to eviscerate separation of church and state, and to hire religious leaders to act as guidance counselors in public schools.

Separation of church and state has been an honored tradition in American life and law for generations. That separation protects the churches by freeing them from state oversight; it also protects the state by preventing religious zealots from interfering in the workings of government.

We are a nation of many religions. Freedom of religion is best protected by keeping the hands of the state far from all religious groups and to prevent religious groups from exercising state power.

Yet here come the Christian nationalists, eager to assert their control over the entire nation, over Catholic Churches, over Muslim mosques, over Jewish synagogues, over the many and diverse religions of our nation, as well as all those who are affiliated with no religion. .

The Constitution does not say that the U.S. is a Christian nation. It says in the First Amendment that there must be freedom of religion for all and that Congress must pass no laws establishing a state religion. The Constitution also says that there must be no religious test for those who hold public office.

If the Founders wanted the U.S. to be a Christian nation, they would have said so. They didn’t.

But we live in a New Age, one where Christian Nationalists are front and center.

Ultican writes:

Since 2024, Louisiana, Arkansas and Texas have passed laws requiring ten commandment posters in all classrooms. These kinds of laws come to us courtesy of a single Christian “bill mill,” Project Blitz. Dozens of other state bills in fidelity with Project Blitz’s proposed legislation were also passed. In 2021, they distributed 74 pieces of model legislation of which 14 passed into law including “Parental Review and Consent for Sex Education” and “Religious Freedom Day” promoting Mark Keierleber, reporting for The 74, wrote, “Among the architects of Project Blitz is the Barton-founded influence machine, WallBuilders.”

The WallBuilders home page claims to be, “Helping Americans Remember and Preserve the True History of Our Great Nation …” Unfortunately; it is in reality a propaganda site posting lies about American history in order to advance a Christian Nationalist agenda. Texas preacher and amateur historian, David Barton, founded WallBuilders and has become the most quoted man in the realm of Christian Nationalism. The organization’s name is an Old Testament reference to rebuilding the walls of Jerusalem.

The Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, told an audience at the ProFamily Legislators Conference, which was being hosted by WallBuilders, Barton’s teachings have had “a profound influence on me, and my work, and my life and everything I do.” It is widely held that the Speaker is a Christian Nationalist. President Trump has cultivated their support. In March, he hosted David Barton in the oval office.

David Barton and Trump in the Oval Office this March

David Barton

Barton was born in Fort Worth, Texas. When he completed junior high, his family moved to the small Texas town of Aledo about 40 miles west of Fort Worth. After graduating third in his high school class, he attended Oral Roberts University, the evangelical Christian college in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Barton came to Oral Roberts on a math and science scholarship but ended up with a degree in religious education.

His parents started a Bible study group in Aledo which became a fundamentalist church and a K-12 school. David taught math and science, coached basketball, and became the school’s principal.

Barton became an amateur historian. In her first book, The Good News Club, Katherine Stewart claimed, “Pseudo-historian David Barton—a Texas-based darling of the Religious Right and founder of the Christian Nationalist organizations WallBuilders and the Black Robe Regiment—seems to have no problem fictionalizing the history.” (Page 67)

H“In a broader sense, Barton’s work is reminiscent of nineteenth-century historians like Charles Coffin and Parson Weems, scholars who wrote from an unabashedly Christian perspective at a time when there was no culture of objectivity among historians. Weems was best known for his biography of George Washington, in which he did his best to claim Washington for the Christians, despite his well-known reputation as a Deist. In a brief, credulous treatise called The Bulletproof George Washington, Barton resurrected an old Weems-era tale about the supposed divine protection of Washington during the French and Indian War.”

Nate Blakeslee in an article for the Texas Monthly observed:

In her second book, The Power Worshippers, Stewart noted:

“The historical errors and obfuscations tumbled out of Barton’s works fast and furious. Intent on demonstrating that the American republic was founded on ‘Judeo-Christian principles,’ Barton reproduced and alleged quote from James Madison to the effect that the Ten Commandments are the foundation of American civilization. Chuck Norris, Rush Limbaugh, Duck Dynasty star Phil Robertson, and countless other luminaries of the right recycled the quote in so many iterations that it has become a fixture of Christian nationalist ideology. Yet there is no evidence that Madison ever said such a thing.” (Page 133)

An NPR article from 2012 provides a good example of what Blakeslee and Stewart are writing about. While most of us learned that the Constitution was a secular document, Barton disagrees and says it is laced with biblical quotations:

‘“You look at Article 3, Section 1, the treason clause,’ he told James Robison on Trinity Broadcast Network. ‘Direct quote out of the Bible. You look at Article 2, the quote on the president has to be a native born? That is Deuteronomy 17:15, verbatim. I mean, it drives the secularists nuts because the Bible’s all over it! Now we as Christians don’t tend to recognize that. We think it’s a secular document; we’ve bought into their lies. It’s not.”

“We looked up every citation Barton said was from the Bible, but not one of them checked out. Moreover, the Constitution as written in 1787 has no mention of God or religion except to prohibit a religious test for office.”

In 2012, Barton’s bestselling book “The Jefferson Lies: Exposing the Myths You’ve Always Believed About Thomas Jefferson” was pulled by its Christian publisher, Thomas Nelson, because they “lost confidence” in the book. Senior Vice President Brian Hampton noted, “There were historical details — matters of fact, not matters of opinion, that were not supported at all.”

The 1792 Aitken Bible was the first Bible ever printed in the USA. Barton claims it was published and paid for by Congress. This was another one of his proofs that the United States was founded on Christian principles. The bible was not published by congress; it was published and paid for by printer Robert Aitken. At the time, there was an embargo on biblesfrom England. Responding to Aitken’s request, Congress agreed to have its chaplains check the Bible for accuracy.

From 1997 to 2006, Barton was vice chairman of the Texas Republican Party.

Barton Speaking at a 2016 Cruz Rally in Henderson, Nevada

The Henderson rally was hosted by Keep the Promise PAC which Barton was running. Besides Cruz, he was also joined on stage by Christian Nationalist pundit Glenn Beck. Barton maintains a relative low profile but his influence is massive.

The Christian Nationalists have a level of power in the Republican Party that is shocking.

Categories Education Reform, Religion, Separation of church and state

Brookings Institution: What Recent Supreme Court Decisions Mean for Public Schools

By dianeravitch
July 25, 2025 //
3

It is obvious that the rightwing Supreme Court tilts decidedly in favor of religious rights and religious schools. The six-member majority seems to have forgotten about separation of church and state and about the “establishment clause,” which forbids government endorsement of religious schools.

The Brookings Institution invited noted scholars to reflect on the Court’s recent decisions and how they are likely to affect public schools.

This is an excellent collection of short commentaries by scholars, not ideologues.

It opens:

The 2024-2025 Supreme Court term was a consequential one for K-12 public education. The Court considered the legality of religious charter schools (Oklahoma Statewide Charter School Board v. Drummond), the rights of students with disabilities to access a public education (A. J. T. v. Osseo Area Schools), and whether parents should be allowed to opt their children out of lessons or access to curriculum material that conflicts with their religious beliefs (Mahmoud v. Taylor).

In this piece, we invited experts on education law and policy to share their reactions to the Supreme Court’s recent decisions this term.

A few excerpts.

Robert Kim writes that the Supreme Court is enthralled by the “free exercise clause” of the First Amendment.

There is a way to characterize the results in the three Supreme Court cases this term touching most directly on K-12 public education in minimalist fashion. Let’s begin there.

In AJT v. Osseo School District (2025), the Court held that parents of students with disabilities who sue public schools for discriminating against their child in violation of federal disability rights laws must prove no more than what litigants would have to prove in other disability discrimination contexts. This holding is logical, unsurprising, and consistent with Supreme Court rulings in recent years that affirm the rights of students with disabilities and eliminate administrative legal hurdles in their path (see Endrew F. and Fry in 2017, and Perez in 2023).

Staying with the minimalist approach, in Mahmoud v. Taylor (2025), the Court ruled that the disallowing parents the ability to opt their children out of LGBTQ+ inclusive curriculum violated parents’ rights to religious free exercise under the First Amendment. The Court’s ruling does notprohibit public schools from adopting inclusive curriculum on LGBTQ+ issues or any other topic, nor does it disturb the basic equal protection principle that public schools must treat all students equally. Parents have long had the ability to opt their children out of various school curricula and activities, so in a sense, Mahmoud simply attaches more finely polished First Amendment armament to an existing right. 

Finally, in Oklahoma Statewide Charter School Board v. Drummond (2025), the Court issued a one-sentence per curiam (unauthored) opinion announcing that it was “equally divided” (due to Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s recusal from the case). The 4-4 deadlock thus affirmed a prior Oklahoma Supreme Court ruling prohibiting what would have been, for the first time in modern U.S. history, the establishment of a religious public school.

And yet. When we remove our minimalist blinders, one can’t help but be deeply troubled by what the two latter cases involving religion portend for the future. There’s language in the majority opinion in Mahmoud that signals the Court’s desire to resist a growing perception–fueled in part by the Court’s own, still-recent rulings sanctioning same-sex marriage and prohibiting discrimination against LGBTQ+ employees–that LGBTQ+ equality is a normative value in American law and society. And, but for Justice Barrett’s recusal in Drummond, the Court almost certainly would have approved the establishment of a public school run by the Catholic Church.

Running through Mahmoud and the oral argument in Drummond are signs that this Court continues to be enthralled by the Free Exercise Clause–to such an extent that it is willing elevate religious rights above other constitutional interests, including the separation of church and state and equal protection. These signs, I fear, spell deep trouble for public education and the rights of students in ways that will be revealed by the Court over the next couple of years.

Derek Black sees trouble ahead:

Public education survived what risked being the most painfully consequential decision in half a century in Drummond—or at least survived to fight another day—while suffering a stiff smack on the hand in Mahmoud. 

With Drummond, forcing states to approve religious charter schools would have delivered control over what it means to be a public school into private hands. Taxpayers would have to pick up the bill for religious schools but have no control over what those schools teach or whether all students have equal access to them. Publicly funding religious schools would also radically reshape funding for public schools. Religious schools that have long operated on tuition may shift their costs onto taxpayers, and many new religious charter schools would surely open. States would face either increasing taxes or cutting the already-too-small education pie into smaller and smaller pieces. The consequences of religious charter schools are important to understand, since the question will almost certainly come before the Court again in the coming years.

Mahmoud is trickier. The threshold question was whether the school’s LGBTQ+ books and curriculum burden parental rights. Prior precedent would have said no, but courts have been exceedingly stingy in recognizing burdens on parental rights and exceedingly deferential on the related matter of school curriculum and the possibility of censorship—almost to the point of absurdity. Whatever you think of the parental burdens issue, we were long overdue for an update on where the Court stands vis-à-vis curriculum. The problem for the Court has been how to draw a line that does not micromanage local school decision-making. It remains unclear where exactly the line on parental burden is now, but it is clear the court lowered the bar for establishing religious burden. That means schools can expect new challenges on topics like vaccine requirements, absences, and student codes of conduct.

Regardless, schools are still free to promote inclusive values and curriculum. And to be clear, the Court did not give students license to harass others based on religious beliefs. Schools can and should continue to prohibit and punish inappropriate behavior—and stick to their values.

Rachel M. Perera predicts that the Court’s decisions have created thorny challenges for schools:

Public education is under attack—from the expansion of universal private school choice programs that are siphoning monies away from already cash-strapped public schools to the Trump administration’s efforts to dismantle the federal education department and the recent withholding of Congressionally mandated federal school funding. And the Drummond and Mahmoud decisions indicate that the Court is more likely to accelerate attacks on public education than to forestall them.  

Both Drummond and Mahmoud, along with other recent decisions of this court—e.g., Kennedy v. Bremerton School District (a ruling in favor of a high school football coach who was fired from a public school for leading postgame prayers) and Carson v. Makin (which struck down a Maine law prohibiting the use of public funds for religious schools)—are evidence of rapidly eroding divides between religion and public life.  

Public schools narrowly avoided catastrophe with the split 4-4 decision in Drummond, but the question of religious charter schools will almost certainly come before the Court again—and under more favorable conditions. Religious charter schools would have major implications for the health of our public education system, the charter school sector, and education funding.

With Mahmoud, the Court ruled that parents should be allowed to opt their children out of school curriculum and programming that conflicts with their religious beliefs. Where future courts will draw the line between legitimate and illegitimate concerns remains to be seen. But what we do know is that this decision adds another layer of costly complexity to the already challenging landscape that school districts are facing given the rise in statewide universal private school choice programs, enrollment declines, and budget shortfalls.

Worse, the Mahmoud decision will undermine local efforts to make school programming and curriculum more pluralistic and inclusive. As Justice Sotomayor pointed out in her dissent, because school districts are resource-constrained and risk-averse, “schools may instead censor their curricula, stripping material that risks generating religious objections.” And we’ve seen this happen before. After the wave of anti-critical race theory state laws in 2021 and 2022, many teachers reported preemptively changing their instruction in the face of potentially costly conflict.

At a time when schools are in dire need of more resources and support, the Court has added only more challenges to their plate.

Open the link to read the excellent contributions by Derek Black and Preston Green.

Categories Curriculum, Religion, Separation of church and state, Vouchers

Stephen Colbert and Father James Martin: Preserve Separation of Church and State

By dianeravitch
July 16, 2025 //
6

Stephen Colbert converses with Jesuit priest James Martin, SJ. You won’t want to miss this!

Categories Religion, Separation of church and state

SCOTUS Gives Trump Permission to Eliminate Department of Education

By dianeravitch
July 15, 2025 //
16

After the election, I confidently predicted that Trump would never be able to get rid of the U.S. Department of Education. To eliminate a Department required Congressional approval, and I was confident that Trump would never get that. He would need 60 votes, not 51, and he would never get them. There might even be Republicans voting to keep the Department.

But I was wrong. Obviously. It didn’t occur to me that Trump would fire half the staff of the Department and dismantle it without seeking Congressional approval.

Yesterday, the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that the President could continue to lay off the employees of the Department of Education while leaving aside the legal question of his power to destroy a Department created by Congress 45 years ago. Its ruling allowed him to achieve his goal without consulting Congress or abiding by the Constitution.

Because he wanted to. And because Congress–if asked– would stop him. And because six members of the Court wanted to help him achieve his goal.

Lower courts told him to reinstate those who were fired without cause. Federal Appeals courts agreed with the lower courts. The Supreme Court reversed them and gave Trump what he wanted.

The Republicans in Congress watched supinely, conceding another of their Constitutuinal powers. They had already abandoned their power of the purse. Trump might as well abolish Congress. He doesn’t need their approval. They have disemboweled themselves, with the approval of the Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court majority are extremists. They occasionally hold up a fig leaf and claim to be “originalists” or “textualists,” interpreting the Constitution as it was written. We now see that they are originalists when it suits them, but not originalists when Trump asks them to expand his imperial powers.

The Founders thought they had created a system of checks and balances, where no single branch could control the other two. Trump is the conniving scoundrel that they warned about in the Federalist Papers.

Republicans were not always hostile to the Department of Education. Reagan wanted to abolish it right away, but instead reaped the rewards of a 1983 report called “A Nation at Risk,” which excoriated the nation’s public schools and undermined the public’s faith in them.

Reagan’s successor, his Vice-President George H.W. Bush, did not try to abolish the Department of Education. Instead, he decided to use it to burnish his credentials. After first appointing a little-known president from Texas as Secretary of Education, Lauro Cavazos, President Bush decided that he wanted to be known as “the Education President.” He appointed Tennessee Governor Lamar Alexander as Secretary and convened a gathering of the nation’s governors to set national goals. (Secretary Alexander selected me to become Assistant Secretary in charge of the Department’s research arm).

There was no talk of abolishing the U.S. Department of Education during the term of Bush 1.

When George W. Bush became President in 2000, he never sought to close down the Department. His first piece of legislation was called No Child Left Behind, and he expected the Department to help him build his claim to be “a compassionate conservative.”

Again, no talk of abolishing the Department during the eight years of Bush 2.

When Trump was elected in 2016, abolishing the Department was not on his agenda. He appointed billionaire Betsy DeVos as Secretary, and her goal was to use the Department to fund charters and vouchers. She shoveled nearly $2 billion into the creation and expansion of charters but got nowhere with a federal voucher plan.

And then came Trump’s second term, where he allied himself with the most extreme elements of the Far Right. They were there during Trump 1, but in his second term, the extremists are in charge. By extremists, I mean not only the anti-government billionaires like Peter Thiel, but the entrenched rightwing zealots of what used to be called the John Birch Society. When Trump denounces Democrats as “Communists,” “radical leftwing lunatics,” and other bile, I feel as if I’m time-traveling back to the McCarthy era, when unhinged rightwingers flung such insults at their political opponents.

With the Supreme Court’s approval, Linda MacMahon will resume firing employees of the Departnent of Education and sending its core programs to other departments.

If the Supreme Court ever gets around to deciding whether Trump has the legal authority to abolish the Department of Education, it will already be gone.

Categories Education Reform, History, Republicans, Separation of church and state, Trump, U.S. Department of Education, Vouchers

Molly Ivins: Vouchers Are a Stupid Idea

By dianeravitch
July 2, 2025 //
2

Molly Ivins was a brilliant journalist in Texas, who died far too young (62). We could surely use her wit and insight right now. She wrote for many publications, including The Texas Observer, The New York Times, the Dallas Times Herald, and the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. She also wrote a nationally syndicated column.

Ivins wrote an article about school vouchers in 1997 that was prescient. All her dire predictions about vouchers were right on target. The strangest part of the debate is that state legislatures now debating vouchers are totally indifferent to the problems they create.

Ivins saw it coming.

She wrote:

Editor’s Note: The Texas Observer published this column in its April 11, 1997, edition under the headline: “Texas: Laboratory for Lunacy.” That year’s private school voucher proposal narrowly died at the Lege.

Three strikes and you’re out? Watch Texas spend more on prisons than it does on schools. Thinking of making your tax structure more regressive? Come to the Lone Star State and see how it’s done. 

The latest brainstorm to afflict our friendly pols in Austin is school vouchers. Consider the beauty of this nifty scheme as it might eventually be worked out under the guidance of the Texas Lege. To improve the public schools (I swear, that’s how the advocates are advertising this lunacy): 

■We give vouchers to all the students who are already in private or religious schools around the state. Right there, before anybody else even gets a voucher, we will have taken, say, $1 billion out of the budget for our public schools. Shrewd move, eh? 

■We also give all the kids now in public school a voucher, thus theoretically enabling these children to attend the schools of their parents’ choice: Unfortunately, private schools might find themselves under no obligation to accept any of our kids; they could be rejected because of their religious affiliation, their disabilities, on the grounds that they’re not bright enough, because the school administrators don’t like their looks—any reason not specifically excluded by law.

The Texas Freedom Network, a normally sensible group of good guys, is running around like Paul Revere, trying to alert the citizenry to this dread downside of the school voucher idea. “Proposed voucher legislation would allow private schools to recruit the best athletes and students at taxpayer expense.” Folks, we’re talking football now! I knew you’d be concerned. Quel horrifying thought: The whole high school football tradition is in dire peril. Stop the madness now! 

On a more sober note, the good private schools we’d all like to send our kids to already have waiting lists a mile long. No public school kid is going to St. John’s in Houston or St. Mark’s in Dallas with a voucher clutched in his or her little hand; those schools cost $10,000 a year, and our little school voucher won’t cover half the cost. 

Now maybe, just maybe, some upper-middle-class folks might be able to afford a fancy private school with a voucher to help, but working-class and middle-class kids are going to be stuck just where they always were. Why should we spend public money to help just that one thin slice of the population when it won’t improve the public schools? 

The rural kids are really going to get burned by this idea. As you may have noticed, almost all private schools are in cities. Hundreds of rural school districts don’t have a single private school, but because of the way state education financing works, they’d still lose thousands of dollars from their budgets for the public schools without a single kid going to private school. 

I realize this means nothing to our Legislature, but it should be mentioned that the whole idea is rankly unconstitutional. 

All in all, this concept is so bad that it has an excellent chance of passing the Legislature. Much as we would like to help the rest of the nation by demonstrating once more just how stupid ideas work out in practice, couldn’t we give this one a miss? 

In case you’re wondering who is pushing this dingbat notion, it’s the religious right, the same charmers who helped elect the right-wingers who now grace the state Board of Education. If you haven’t checked in on the state board lately, you really should. It’s a lot of fun—fruitcakes unlimited, flat-Earthers, creationists, all manner of remarkable specimens. In fact, it’s gotten so bad that there’s even a bill in the Lege to replace it with an appointed board again. 

You may recall that we’ve had this fight before. In keeping with my Theory of Perpetual Reform, I now favor an appointed board. Last time, I favored an elected board. What I really favor is the idea that no matter what we try, in about ten years, it’s always a mess again and we need to try something else. 

Speaking of matters educational, let me take on a sacred cow that is long past its prime: local control. Have you noticed that the people who consider local control of the schools a sanctified arrangement are the same people who are always complaining about how terrible the schools are? If local control is such a great idea, then how come the schools are so bad? Have we considered the possibility that maybe local control is the problem? 

A truism of the everlasting education debates is that someone somewhere has already solved whatever the problem is. Someone somewhere is always doing a brilliant job of teaching physics to inner-city kids, or teaching music to a bunch of rural kids in the 4-H who have heretofore considered Loretta Lynn classical music, or getting bored suburban brats excited about Herman Melville. 

The problem is that we can’t seem to replicate the successes in the schools across the board because there is no across the board. Instead, there’s local control. Sometimes it’s superb, granted. But often, it’s hopelessly knot-headed. Ask the folks in Dallas—they’ve had some lulus lately. It seems to me just possible that maybe what we need to do is take education out of the hands of insurance salesmen, Minute Women and other odd ephemera of the electoral process and put it in the hands of… well, educators. 

Categories Education Reform, Separation of church and state, Stupid, Texas, Vouchers

The Battle Over the Ten Commandments in the Classroom

By dianeravitch
June 23, 2025 //
24

On Friday June 20, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals overturned Louisiana’s law requiring that schools post the Ten Commandments in every classroom.

On Saturday June 21, Governor Greg Abbot of Texas announced that he had signed a law requiring that the Ten Commandments be posted in every classroom in the state.

The goal of plastering the Ten Commandments in every schoolroom is promoted by Christian nationalists who want to see an official declaration that the U.S. is a Christian nation.

The Founding Fathers would be stunned to hear the assertion that the Constitution they wrote was influenced by the Ten Commandments. The First Amendment very clearly states the importance of freedom of religion, meaning that anyone could practice any religion or none at all. It also declares that government should not “establish” any religion, meaning that government should not sponsor or endorse or favor any religion.

CNN reported:

Texas’ law requires public schools to post in classrooms a 16-by-20-inch (41-by-51-centimeter) poster or framed copy of a specific English version of the commandments, even though translations and interpretations vary across denominations, faiths and languages and may differ in homes and houses of worship.

Supporters say the Ten Commandments are part of the foundation of the United States’ judicial and educational systems and should be displayed.

NPR reported on the decision striking down the Louisiana law.

Its supporters said that the Ten Commandments were the foundation of the American legal system. The state of Louisiana intends to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The court’s ruling stems from a lawsuit filed last year by parents of Louisiana school children from various religious backgrounds, who said the law violates First Amendment language guaranteeing religious liberty and forbidding government establishment of religion.

The ruling also backs an order issued last fall by U.S. District Judge John deGravelles, who declared the mandate unconstitutional and ordered state education officials not to enforce it and to notify all local school boards in the state of his decision.

Republican Gov. Jeff Landry signed the mandate into law last June.

Landry said in a statement Friday that he supports the attorney general’s plans to appeal.

“The Ten Commandments are the foundation of our laws — serving both an educational and historical purpose in our classrooms,” Landry said.

The Founding Fathers would laugh at Governor Abbot and Landry. And Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who shepherded a similar law in Arkansas. It’s especially funny that the leader of their party has broken almost every one of the Ten Commandments. Perhaps the place to start posting them is in the Oval Office.

Categories Education Reform, Extremism, Louisiana, Religion, Separation of church and state, Texas
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