Posted on 09/25/2001 9:36:37 AM PDT by Alissa
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Supreme Court said on Tuesday it will decide whether vouchers, a program endorsed by President Bush that uses tax dollars to pay student tuition at religious schools, are constitutional.
The justices, getting an early start on their new term that begins next Monday, agreed to review a U.S. appeals court ruling that struck down an experimental private school voucher program in Cleveland on the grounds it violated constitutional church-state separation.
The high court accepted the recommendation of the Bush administration to resolve once and for all whether such programs were a permissible way to expand educational choices for children enrolled in failing public schools.
``This is probably the most important church-state case in the last half-century,'' said Barry Lynn of the group Americans United for Separation of Church and State. ``It will be a historic showdown over government funding of religion.''
Voucher supporters agreed on the case's significance.
``This is the most important educational opportunity case since Brown v. Board of Education,'' Clint Bolick of the group Institute for Justice said, referring to the landmark 1954 ruling that ended school segregation.
The Cleveland program has allowed some 4,000 students from mostly low-income families to receive tuition vouchers of up to $2,500 apiece to attend other private or public schools if their parents decided local schools did not meet their needs.
The appeals court struck down the program because it used tax money to pay student tuition for schools with a religious affiliation, promoting religious education.
CASE MAY HAVE SWEEPING NATIONAL CONSEQUENCES
The Supreme Court will hear arguments in the closely watched case early next year, with a decision due by the end of June. If the court upholds the Cleveland program, it would have sweeping national consequences for education policy.
The Supreme Court, with a 5-4 conservative majority, has handed down a string of recent rulings that lowered the wall of church-state separation by allowing some state involvement with religious schools. But it has never decided the voucher issue.
Supporters of vouchers maintained they promote competition in education and force public schools to improve while opponents argued they threaten the fiscal integrity of the nation's public school system.
School vouchers were a centerpiece of Bush's education platform during his presidential campaign.
The Ohio Pilot Project Scholarship program started in 1995 and covered kindergarten through eighth grade. The only other larger voucher program involving religious schools was in Milwaukee.
Solicitor General Theodore Olson, the Bush administration's top courtroom lawyer, said the Ohio program ``distributes educational aid on neutral terms ... without regard to religion.''
He said private choice helped ensure that the government was not seen as endorsing religion.
In one appeal to the Supreme Court, Ohio Attorney General Betty Montgomery said the case presented ``a fundamental constitutional issue of profound importance to education policy in the United States.'' Alabama, Delaware, Mississippi, Nebraska and South Carolina all supported the appeal.
Private schools in Cleveland and five Cleveland families participating in the program also filed appeals.
Opponents of the program, including the American Civil Liberties Union, argued the appeals should be rejected.
They said the appeals court in its ruling properly applied a 1973 Supreme Court ruling that struck down a private school tuition payment program.
Dismantle the NEA. Bring on choices! I'm ready to get some REAL competition, and I'm gunning to be one of those teachers that are highly sought after by the parents in my community! If I can't, then I should be looking for a new job, or at least sweating the pressure of better teachers trying to replace me. Do our children and our future deserve less than that?
The problem is that many teachers and members of the NEA know that only the COMPETENT educators will see this increase, and that they are not part of that group.
Or guess what side Ginsburg (z?) and her comrades are going to be on? (She was, although Biden refused to allow comment or interviews during HER cornonation to the Court!) the senior ACLU lawyer.......
Exactly. But if they chose not to treat religion on neutral terms, they had better be prepared to strip out every single Tax requirement that applies to Churches. If the Court insists on a Wall of Separation, it better work both ways.
This is a stretch. There are 3 conservative Justices (and I am not sure how Rehnquist's track record compares to Scalia's anyway). There are 3 liberal justices. And there are two in the middle, who basically get to decide how things will go.
It would be good, but the people who would have to do it are responsible only to themselves -- not to the voters. A really good start would be to dismantle the cabinet position and far-reaching Federal bureaucracy established by Jimmih Cahtah -- the Department of Education.
What the NEA doesn't understand is that increased competition will be good for education, and that many teachers will see increased wages.
They understand it all too well. The NEA is not in the business of bettering the lives of competent teachers. They are socialist union thugs, bent on maintaining the wage-slave status of the industry, whilst filling their own deep pockets.
You composed 2 proper paragraphs and left no dangling participles. I don't think you need to sweat it.
I think the reason is actually a little different. I think the appropriate analogy is to Jesse Jackson, Sharpton, and other professional victimization cheerleaders. If their flock realizes that success is within their reach, based on nothing more than their own skills and hard work, the rabble rousers are out of a job.
Similarly, under a voucher system, teachers would be rewarded for skill at teaching rather than political reliability, union/political involvement, and seniority. The power of the traditional educational establishment to control the content of the kids' "education" (indoctrination) would be at risk. Compare this to the mainstream media whining because people can now get news from the Internet, the content of which the moguls can't contol and sanitize.
Excellent thought. I had always just thought in terms of the GI Bill for use in private and religious colleges. Where else is public money allowed for use in private and religious institutions? Don't Catholic Charities and Lutheran Social Services get lots of public money? Shouldn't this school policy be seen as just a logical extension of Bush's "Faith-Based" initiative?
Bust is smart. He didn't fight for vouchers in his Education Bill because he knew that it would tie up his bill (which I don't like), so he wants Ted Olson to fight for it in the Supreme court. Bush is no dummy. He has political smarts.
-Moleman
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