There is a lot i=of disagreement about funding religious schools. It used to be that religious schools received no funding at all from the government. However, three then were court rulings which expanded "religious freedoms" where conservative judges ruled that religious schools should be eligible for some funding. Add into that the "Charter schools" most of which are private schools that receive government funding, which came into existence with the claim that they would provide parents with educational choices for their children, but which mostly only let private schools for the rich start to receive money to subsidize education for rich kids, however, the general public has not yet caught on to that yet.

When charter schools were first started, the demand was so great that the charter schools got to pick which students they would take, and they picked the highest achieving students. Thus when test results came out the charter schools initially had higher test scores. However a few years later, because the school were "for profit" they kept making cuts and cutting corners to save money, and most charter schools fell behind average in test scores. Meanwhile the extra high tuition schools for the rich got more money tht was diverted from public schools, which increased their profits and education quality.

Like I said, most people have not caught on yet that charter schools were mostly a big con. It was developed mostly because after years to trying and failing to sell people on school voucher programs, which also tried (but failed) to sell parents on giving parents educational choices for their kids, it was too easy to figure out that the rich were just trying to get tax payers to subsidize education for rich kids. Charter schools was a new twist of the same thing, which they sold by having pilot programs which picked which students would participate, and they only picked high achievers to begin with, which screwed the results, but managed to sell most of the nation on the program.

Anyway, the charter schools opened the door for the government funding private schools with tax payer money, and so the religious schools sued, saying it was religious discrimination to not fund their schools as well, and some conservative judges agreed. So, that is where we are now.

The net result is the further dumbing down of the U.S.