Legal and Policy Issues Regarding Niche Charter Schools: Race, Religion, Culture, and the Law

A growing number of ethnocentric or culturally oriented niche charter schools have opened around the country. These ethnic or culture-oriented models raise legal and policy concerns about church/state entanglement as well as concerns about diversity. Indeed, there has already been litigation focused on racial and ethnic aspects of charter schools as well as religious influences. Despite the litigation in these areas, the constitutional tensions to which ethnocentric charter schools give rise have not been fully explored in the literature. Using legal research methods, this article examines the existing litigation involving culture-oriented charter schools and discusses the policy and legal tensions involved.