Three Education Stories To Watch In 2024

And one to ignore

From Forbes, the obligatory prediction for the coming year.

What’s a new year without predicting which stories will require attention in the coming months. Here are three education stories (and one non-story) to watch in 2024.

Taxpayer-funded Religious Schools

The advance of voucher programs in 2023 has already led to many states using taxpayer dollars to fund private religious schools. But activists still want to see another line crossed.

At the moment, Oklahoma is trying to launch a taxpayer-funded Catholic charter school. As Heidi Przybyla reported for Politico, the legal challenges to that launch have drawn the attention and involvement of a wide assortment of groups from the conservative legal world, including the Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative Christian firm that helped bring the end of Roe v. Wade.

Many conservatives sense an opportunity, given the Supreme Court’s willingness to value the free exercise clause over the establishment clause in previous cases attacking the wall between church and school; Trinity Lutheran, Espinoza, and Carson, three cases that poked holes in the wall between church and state. Kevin Welner, director of the National Education Policy Center at the University of Colorado at Boulder’s School of Education, warned that in light of these three decisions, “states will probably be forced to let churches and other religious institutions apply for charters and operate charter schools.” The fact that charter schools may be described in state law as public schools will not matter.

That’s where the Oklahoma case may take us this year. The hope appears to get to The Supreme Court, which could erase the last bit of the wall, requiring taxpayers to fund religious schools just as they fund public schools.

You can read the rest here.