Fordham has previously come out in favor of religious charter schools. Here's Checker in 2003, here's Mike in 2007. And here's the Tarek ibn Ziyad Academy in 2008 ; the Wall Street Journal 's op-ed, which describes an Islamic school funded with taxpayer dollars,??is disquieting. We've previously covered in Gadfly Tarek ibn Ziyad Academy, but we've done so, in my mind, in an unsatisfactory manner. (See our first mention here and our next mention, the following week, from Checker, here .)
To allow religious charter schools would set into action a wholly unsavory series of events, and we'd be confronted with all sorts of questions that don't have easy answers, such as, what is a religion? and what are acceptable religious beliefs? And after reducing our stock of questions, we'll eventually be left with these bits: Either we allow any and all religions to set up schools to teach any and all of their proclaimed beliefs, or we allow none. The latter seems healthier, so why not save ourselves all the trouble and put the kibosh on talk about religious charter schools?
Update: Via Eduwonk: Looks like the question phase has begun .
Photo by Flickr user corydalus .