Posted on 06/27/2002 9:11:01 PM PDT by Pokey78
Edited on 04/23/2004 12:04:37 AM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
Free at last, private school choice is free at last.
The U.S. Supreme Court yesterday struck the greatest blow for equal public education since Brown v. Board of Education in 1954. In the process it also stripped away the last Constitutional and moral figleaf from those who want to keep minority kids trapped in failing public schools.
(Excerpt) Read more at opinionjournal.com ...
Let's hope so. Although the God haters may still have more tricks up their sleaves. Just the thought that someone somewhere may be praying to Jesus makes them go mouth-foaming, head-spinning, spaz-attack psycho-rabid like Linda Blair in The Exorcist.
Click here for the decision. Opinions from OConnor & Thomas are about a third of the way down.
Use the CTRL-F trick and type in the name you want to search. It will lead you right to their opinions.
Frederick Douglass once said that [e]ducation means emancipation. It means light and liberty. It means the uplifting of the soul of man into the glorious light of truth, the light by which men can only be made free.1 Today many of our inner-city public schools deny emancipation to urban minority students. Despite this Courts observation nearly 50 years ago in Brown v. Board of Education, that it is doubtful that any child may reasonably be expected to succeed in life if he is denied the opportunity of an education, 347 U.S. 483, 493 (1954), urban children have been forced into a system that continually fails them. These cases present an example of such failures. Besieged by escalating financial problems and declining academic achievement, the Cleveland City School District was in the midst of an academic emergency when Ohio enacted its scholarship program.
The dissents and respondents wish to invoke the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, as incorporated through the Fourteenth, to constrain a States neutral efforts to provide greater educational opportunity for underprivileged minority students. Todays decision properly upholds the program as constitutional, and I join it in full.
It is refreshing to see that someone understands that the purpose of the Establishment clause was to "make no law respecting the establishment of a religion, nor prohibiting the free exercise thereof"...NOT "removing all traces of religion from public life."
Is somebody ever going to ask why it is that the state should have any say in how or where we educate our children? Since there is no constitutional basis for public education I can only conclude that those who send their kids to government schools are just like the proverbial welfare bum, hopelessly attached to the government teat.
The NEA types and liberals seem to always ask: why is the biggest alternative school system in America Roman Catholic? This fuels their fear of religion in the voucher debate. The answer is in history, when the state began educating American kids, there was a strong Protestant bias, forcing Catholics to create their own seperate school system. This goes back 200 years (!).
Recently, "private" as opposed to "porochial" schools have mushroomed, but the price is high. Parents in the "bad part of town" who love their children agonize over the costs of private and/or porochial school... most just can't make the tuition payments. NOW THEY CAN. The voucher takes what the government would've spent anyway and gives the decision to the parent. Watch American education improve FAST. The free market tends to punish slackers and reward the enterprising. Ask any porochial school teacher, who, by the way, makes LESS than his public school counterpart why they stay.... most admit that they like the discipline, class order and parent participation of porochial schools. It's not as much about Jesus as you might think! It's about discipline, personal safety and solid education.
The "Pledge" ruling begs for private schools as well.
From what I can tell, the most a parent would get in the form of a voucher is around $3,000. The price of the best private school in Dallas, TX is around $13,000.
Vouchers are great in theory, but I am afraid that once the NEA get their hands on the details, private schools will be no longer be free to teach the way they see best. Government standards will become the name of the game. And what private school is going to want to take on the same standards which created failed government school system?
Right now, I am paying around $12,000 to educate three children. That includes everything, homeschool curriculum, music lessons, extra private and group tutoring. I am also paying around $4,000 to educate somebody elses kids through my taxes, that I know about. It would be really nice to recieve a tax credit of some sort for the $16,000+ I am paying right now for education.
Because I am doing my own thing, I enjoy the maximum amount of freedom in education. I would be unwilling to exchange that for any interference through government regulation.
As for poorer parents, if they live in an apartment they would not be eligible for a tax credit because they don't pay property taxes directly.
Please, please tell me you're NOT a legislator. That kind of argument stretching is dangerous and is the cause for government excess of every imaginable kind.
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