Might prohibiting religious charter schools amount to an illegal form of discrimination under the Constitution? The Supreme Court may eventually have to answer that question. “Charter schools are the next frontier,” Preston Green, an education law professor at the University of Connecticut, previously told Chalkbeat.

“The concern that I have is the temptation to just say that we’ve done enough, and we don’t have to worry about students in the traditional public schools, because if they don’t like it, they have another school they can go to,” Preston Green said.

Are charter schools like polluting industries? That’s a provocative analogy, but two University of Connecticut researchers explore it in a recent paper. They contend that, while some charter schools may help students, the sector needs stronger regulation to prevent harm to students and school districts. “I would argue that, even if there are benefits, that does not give you carte blanche to not regulate or mitigate the harms that occur,” Preston C. Green III, the paper’s lead author, told me.

Preston Green is a professor of educational leadership and law at the University of Connecticut and the John and Maria Neag Professor of Urban Education at the Neag School of Education. He’s a nationally recognized expert on school choice, charter schools, and the complex legal landscape of American public education. He stops by this week to talk about the Supreme Court, charter schools, the fight over school curricula, and more.

Preston Green, an educational policy professor at the University of Connecticut, says there is ongoing legal debate about whether charter schools are public or private institutions.

“Courts have had a very difficult time over the years making these distinctions whether charter schools are public or private because the laws may be different depending on the issue,” Green says.

But as the first Black woman on the court, Jackson would likely be more attuned to issues of race and gender as reflected in school dress codes or restrictions on Black hairstyles like braids, and she might see “discrimination that maybe another justice might not,” said Preston Green, an education professor at the University of Connecticut.

Some legal scholars say that raises a new question. If a state can’t keep a private religious school out of its voucher program, can it stop a religious school from participating in its charter school program?

“Charter schools are the next frontier,” Preston Green, an education law professor at the University of Connecticut. Compared to school vouchers, “this could actually be more of a win for religious entities if they can get it.”

Preston Green, at the University of Connecticut, said there’s more at stake than the rights of students attending charter schools, which have continued to experience growth through the pandemic. If charters are not state actors, it would be easier for them to exclude some students, he said.

A group of education law scholars, including Neag School’s Preston Green, has filed a friend-of-the-court brief in Carson v. Makin, a U.S. Supreme Court case about public funds for religious schools.

In a recent article that he co-authored in The Conversation, Preston Green III, a professor at the University of Connecticut’s Neag school of education, outlined a four-part formula designed to address racial inequities in public schools.

The formula includes tax rebates to Black homeowners, adding a factor into school finance formulas that accounts for the negative effects of racial isolation, removing policies that have racist roots and increasing state aid to school districts in majority-Black districts so that it makes up for gaps in local revenues.