As courts grapple with whether religious schools should receive public funding, debates over religion and public education are increasingly disconnected from the actual needs of our students. Recent court cases revolve around the same question: What role, if any, should religion play in the operation of public schools?
While this question is legally significant, it is the wrong question for improving educational outcomes and fostering upward mobility and civic engagement for American students.
By focusing on control—who governs schools, who receives public funding, and where the line should be drawn between church and state—the current debate obscures an urgent matter: how religion can be a resource that enables public schools to expand opportunity and bridge social divides.
Since their founding, US public schools have aspired to provide children of all backgrounds with an equal opportunity to learn. Horace Mann, credited with expanding tax-supported, universal schooling in the 19th century, wrote that public schooling in America would become “the great equalizer of the conditions of men.” Though we’ve made important progress, our public education system is failing to meet this promise. Gaps in learning opportunities persist across lines of students’ race and family income, and many teachers leave the profession they love because of poor working conditions and limited support.
US public schools have aspired to provide children of all backgrounds with an equal opportunity to learn.
If addressing these entrenched problems is our primary concern, the question we should be asking is how religious pluralism can help public schools accomplish their longstanding purpose.
Our recent report, “Faith in Educational Renewal,” from the Wheatley Institute at Brigham Young University and the Leadership Initiative for Faith and Education at Harvard University, finds that religious participation is linked to higher academic achievement, school completion, and college aspirations—especially for students from working-class families. These benefits often flow through the moral values, study skills, and social networks that students gain from participating in religious life. Of course, students can develop values, skills, and networks elsewhere, but it is difficult to replicate the stable communities that religious organizations sustain.
Faith-based organizations also improve student learning outcomes through partnerships with public schools. These partnerships provide tutoring, mentoring, and college preparation, all of which can improve student literacy, social-emotional development, and family engagement with the school.
The faith of teachers also matters. Teachers are more likely than other professionals to be religious. Many describe their work with students as a calling. According to research, when teachers sense a calling to their profession, it deepens their professional commitments and amplifies their unique professional talents. Teachers often draw on their spirituality to stay committed and effective in challenging classrooms. Religious faith can strengthen teachers’ belief in their ability to reach even the most disengaged students.
Our choice is not limited to sectarian education or the exclusion of religion.
How can we support more of these voluntary partnerships? How can we expand their impact without inhibiting or promoting religion? How can we help public school educators draw on their faith and spirituality to be more effective and find greater meaning in their work with students and other educators? How can religion contribute to—rather than control—public schooling? These are the questions we should be asking.
Skeptics of this work will raise legitimate concerns. Some secularists want no entanglement between faith and public education. But decades of evidence show that public schools alone are not closing opportunity gaps. When we exclude faith communities from partnerships, we ignore a valuable resource in our battle against educational inequality.
The question is not whether religion should run public schools.
Some sectarians want religious groups to have more control over public education. In response, we appeal to the Golden Rule and to the United States Constitution. We can live our faith by improving learning opportunities for students from disadvantaged communities. We honor our Constitution’s Establishment Clause by neither advancing nor inhibiting any single religion in public schools.
Our choice is not limited to sectarian education or the exclusion of religion from public education. We recommend a third way for schools to partner with faith communities. The question is not whether religion should run public schools—or even whether faith communities should partner with them. They already do. The right question is how to expand and deepen partnerships that draw on community, human, material, and moral resources available through religious pluralism to provide every student with a fair chance.
States can highlight promising partnerships that already exist. School leaders can identify specific student needs and invite faith-based volunteers to offer tutoring, mentoring, family support, or other resources. Faith communities can approach schools to offer services that benefit all students, regardless of their beliefs. School leaders and educational authorities can help teachers draw on their spirituality to navigate thorny challenges and find greater fulfillment in their classrooms. By focusing on collaboration rather than control, public schools can tap religious faith as an underused resource to transform learning opportunities for all students, especially those from disadvantaged backgrounds.
