Can Faith Partnerships Save Public Education?

Religious faith can serve as an untapped resource to improve learning opportunities for all students, according to a new report from researchers at Harvard Graduate School of Education and Brigham Young University’s Wheatley Institute.

According to Harvard: “Imagine if…every public school in the United States was partnered directly to a faith community to address specific academic needs such as literacy development, math fluency, or ensuring every single child is known by a caring adult,” it states on the homepage of its education initiative. “At LIFE, we are committed to identifying and elevating these partnerships where they exist and helping to cultivate them where they don’t.”

“After nearly two centuries, the promise of U.S. public schools to foster effective and meaningful learning opportunities for all children across race and social class remains unfulfilled,” said Bryant Jensen, one of the study’s authors. “Large gaps in learning opportunities continue to persist by student race and ethnicity while opportunity gaps by gender and family income are widening. We believe religious faith can help bridge these gaps.”

Seven in 10 Americans identify with a faith tradition, and religious faith plays a significant role in various dimensions of human flourishing.

The authors define religious faith as both personal spiritual beliefs and practices, and participation in religious organizations. Faith organizations offer various educational services, including donations of school supplies, tutoring, mentoring, college preparation assistance, youth development services and parent education classes.

Well-coordinated partnerships between schools and faith organizations can positively affect parental involvement and student reading outcomes.

The authors urge a “third way” in the nonsectarian tradition of Benjamin Franklin that avoids both: endorsing religion in schools and entirely excluding it from the work of schools. Top recommendations for faith leaders, educators, policymakers and researchers include the following:

• Share information about existing school-faith partnerships.
• Establish regular communication between faith communities and public schools.
• Develop targeted educational programming within houses of worship based on local student needs.
• Build coordinated partnerships between faith organizations and schools to address student learning needs.
• Give educators opportunities to explore how their work and faith intersect.
• Expand research on religious faith as an educational resource for improving learning opportunities for all students.

Religious faith has inspired many movements that expanded democracy and justice such as abolition, women’s suffrage and the civil rights movement in American history.

“With more than 350,000 houses of worship across the United States, the question is how we harness religious faith in similar ways today to meet pressing and complex learning needs of our students,” coauthor Irvin Scott said. “Improving learning opportunities for disadvantaged students requires moral resources that religious faith can help to provide.”

–Alan Goforth

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