Among the many executive orders signed by President Donald Trump in the first weeks of his new administration is one that frees up federal funding in support of school choice. This is great news for many parents and a much-needed pushback against public schools’ virtual monopoly over our nation’s education system. 

The president’s Jan. 29 executive order, “Expanding Education Freedom and Opportunity for Families,” directs the Education Department to prioritize school-choice programs through its discretionary grants, in addition to issuing guidance to states about federal allocations to districts and schools. 

Bishop David O’Connell of Trenton, New Jersey, the chairman of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee on Catholic Education, applauded the order, remarking that it “rightly recognizes that parents are the primary educators of their children.” 

Bishop O’Connell also used the opportunity to restate the Church’s teaching, laid out most recently in Gravissimum Educationis, that “since parents have given children their life, they are bound by the most serious obligation to educate them and therefore must be recognized as the primary and principal educators of their own children.”

Although the order addresses the value of faith-based options for specific families, it doesn’t apply to every family in America. For example, the Department of Health and Human Services will explain how those states receiving block grants for families and children can use that money for faith-based and private institutions. It also directs the defense secretary to present a plan for how military families can use Pentagon funds to send their children to schools of their choosing, including faith-based schools, and the secretary of the interior to submit a plan for how students at Bureau of Indian Education schools can take advantage of federal funds for school choice. 

This raises an important question: If every parent has the inherent right and obligation to educate their child, why shouldn’t every family have available faith-based options? 

The U.S. Supreme Court agreed to address this question in a case involving a Catholic “virtual school” in Oklahoma. In June 2023, the Oklahoma Statewide Virtual Charter School Board approved the application of St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School for charter-school sponsorship. Run by the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City and the Diocese of Tulsa, St. Isidore’s is aimed at children who lack adequate educational choice, or find traditional schooling difficult as a result of learning difficulties. 

Charter schools are publicly funded but privately run. Charter schools currently exist in 45 states and the District of Columbia. A recent study reveals that charter-school students “show greater academic gains than their peers in traditional public schools.” 

One commentator at the National Assessment of Educational Progress said, “If Catholic schools were a state, they would be the highest performing state in the country.”

However, Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond has sought to bar St. Isidore from the state’s charter-school program. In his view, approving St. Isidore’s application would “unfortunately” require “the approval of charter schools by all faiths, even those most Oklahomans would consider reprehensible and unworthy of public funding.” Approving St. Isidore “will require the state to permit extreme sects of the Muslim faith to establish a taxpayer funded public charter school teaching Sharia Law.” 

Drummond sought a writ of mandamus in the Oklahoma Supreme Court to end St. Isidore’s contract and deprive it of state funding — money it would receive if only it would abandon its religious exercise. In a split decision, the Oklahoma Supreme Court issued the writ, ruling that the charter school was unconstitutional because “the expenditure of state funds for St. Isidore’s operations constitute the use of state funds for the benefit and support of the Catholic Church,” violating the First Amendment.  

On Jan. 24, the Supreme Court granted and consolidated review of Oklahoma Statewide Charter School Board v. Drummond and St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School v. Drummond. Drafted by the Notre Dame Law School Religious Liberty Clinic on behalf of St. Isidore’s, its petition explains that St. Isidore is a private religious entity that “accepted Oklahoma’s invitation to create an innovative school to bring educational diversity and choice through the state’s charter school program.” 

The school has not been designed by the state; nor did the state create the school’s religious character. Additionally, the petition asserts that the Free Exercise Clause “protects St. Isidore from discriminatory state laws that would bar it from participating in the charter school program or receiving funding solely because the school it has chosen to build is religious.” 

The idea suggested by Drummond that certifying St. Isidore’s as a charter school is just a hop, skip and a jump from endorsing sharia (Islamic) law is ludicrous. Even more alarming are the blatantly anti-Catholic views coming from progressive publications. 

A recent commentary piece appearing in Slate, for example, asserts that “St. Isidore is using the courts to further its own conservative Catholic agenda.” The authors argue, “This case shows that the conservative project of dismantling public things is about not simply privatization — diverting public funds into private hands — but, in fact, privatizing the public sphere for its own ideological purposes.” 

Meanwhile, over at Vox, this case offers yet another chance to attack Catholic teaching. “What if a religious public school excludes some students because of traits unrelated to their faith? Could a religious public school forbid gay students from attending, for example? Or could it expel a boy if it learns that, after school hours and in the privacy of his own home, that boy kissed another boy?” the author asks.

This sort of blatant anti-Catholicism hasn’t been seen in America for decades. It’s deeply ingrained in the politics of the progressive left, which appears to have learned nothing from its 2024 election defeat. There is no point arguing with these people, as President Trump discovered long ago. He has used executive orders to pull the rug from under them on a number of issues. He has begun to do so in the area of school choice — but, as the discrimination against St. Isidore’s illustrates, he needs to go further.