Then there is prayer. In 2022, the Supreme Court ruled that a football coach could pray at the 50-yard line after games as long as no player was required to join him. We have since seen many debates over prayer in public schools.
Finally, last year Oklahoma approved the country’s first religious charter school, a public school run by a private organization that is freed from many regulations governing traditional public schools. Last month, the Oklahoma Supreme Court struck it down, ruling religious chartering an unconstitutional entanglement of government and religion. Soon after, State Superintendent of Public Instruction Ryan Walters ordered all public schools to incorporate the Bible in instruction from fifth through twelfth grade.
Why inject religion into public schools? Why can families who want religious education not simply go to private institutions?
Quite possibly because there are not enough religious schools to meet demand.
While religiosity has been declining in the United States, people are still largely religious. Gallup, for instance, reports that 47% of people in 2023 identified as religious and an additional 33% as spiritual. Of course, many people identifying as religious might not be especially devout. Another Gallup survey found that 41% of people attend services at least monthly, perhaps a better gauge of strong religiosity.
The share of schools that are religious is much lower. Using the most recent federal data on public and private schools, in the 2020–21 school year, there were 123,329 elementary and secondary schools in the U.S. Of those, only 24,090 were private, and only 18,130, or 15%, were religious.
Maybe people tend to be religious but do not want religion in their education. That is possible, but we cannot conclude that because, currently, we systematically discriminate against religious schooling in how we fund education. We require people to pay taxes for “free” public schools, and if they want private, including religious, to pay again.
This almost certainly keeps the religious school supply artificially low. It is very hard to survive financially when the government gives away something you are producing, even if the government version falls short of what people would prefer.
Absent public schools, we cannot assume that 41% to 47% of schools would be religious, but the share would almost certainly be higher.
The good news is that we are in the midst of an explosion of programs that share education funding with families. Since 2021, 11 states have passed universal or near-universal school choice programs, meaning there are no special qualifications to receive funds. Indeed, at the same time Gov. Jeff Landry (R‑LA) signed the Ten Commandments bill, he signed the Louisiana Giving All True Opportunity to Rise Scholarship Program. LA GATOR will let state money be put into education savings accounts that can be used for private school tuition, tutoring, therapies, and more.
School choice programs, which recently surpassed enrolling one million students, are the key to leveling the playing field for religious education, though most only give families a fraction of what would be spent on their children in public schools. In Arizona, for instance, the basic savings account deposit is pegged at 90% of state base funding, or around $7,000. The average total spending per public school student is around $14,000. But even smaller amounts get the ball rolling toward equality.
If religious people could more easily and fairly access religious education, it would help everyone. They could get the education they want without having to impose it in the public schools where, no doubt, many people do not want it. Everyone would come out ahead.
