Free Republic

NINE OF 10 Louisiana children who receive vouchers to attend private schools are black. All are poor and, if not for the state assistance, would be consigned to low-performing or failing schools with little chance of learning the skills they will need to succeed as adults. So it’s bewildering, if not downright perverse, for the Obama administration to use the banner of civil rights to bring a misguided suit that would block these disadvantaged students from getting the better educational opportunities they are due. The Justice Department has petitioned a U.S. District Courtto bar Louisiana from awarding vouchers for the...

There’s an incredible irony there, given who is Attorney General of the United States: Give Eric Holder credit for cognitive racial dissonance. On nearly the same day the Attorney General spoke in Washington to honor the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I have a dream” speech, his Justice Department sued to block the educational dreams of minority children in Louisiana.Late last week, Justice asked a federal court to stop 34 school districts in the Pelican State from handing out private-school vouchers so kids can escape failing public schools. Mr. Holder’s lawyers claim the voucher program appears “to impede...

The U.S. Justice Department is trying to stop the state from distributing school vouchers in any district that remains under a desegregation court order. In papers filed Saturday in U.S. District Court in New Orleans, the Justice Department said Louisiana distributed vouchers in 2012-13 to nearly 600 public school students in districts that are still under such orders, and “many of those vouchers impeded the desegregation process.” Republican Gov. Bobby Jindal called the department’s action “shameful” and said President Barack Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder “are trying to keep kids trapped in failing public schools against the wishes of...

Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal's private school tuition voucher program has been ruled unconstitutional by a state judge. State Judge Tim Kelley said Friday that the program improperly diverts money allocated through the state's public school funding formula to private schools. He also said it unconstitutionally diverts local tax dollars to private schools. Kelley ruled in a lawsuit backed by teacher unions and school boards seeking to shut down the voucher program. The state education department and the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education said the programs were funded and created in line with the constitution.

<p>BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) - The Louisiana Supreme Court has refused to stop the launch of Gov. Bobby Jindal's statewide voucher program, which began this month.</p> <p>The high court denied an injunction request by teacher unions and school boards to stall the voucher program as they challenge whether it is constitutional. A hearing in the court case is set for October.</p>

SOUTH BEND, Ind. (AP) - Weeks after Indiana began the nation's broadest school voucher program, thousands of students have transferred from public to private schools, causing a spike in enrollment at some Catholic institutions that were only recently on the brink of closing for lack of pupils. It's a scenario public school advocates have long feared: Students fleeing local districts in large numbers, taking with them vital tax dollars that often end up at parochial schools. Opponents say the practice violates the separation of church and state.

A Palm Coast rabbi and an Ormond Beach school principal are front and center in a legal challenge filed Wednesday to a 2012 ballot proposal that would repeal Florida's constitutional ban on using public money to aid churches and other religious organizations. Rabbi Merrill Shapiro, who lives in Palm Coast and is the spiritual leader of Temple Shalom in Deltona, and Pine Trail Elementary Principal Susan Persis are among nine plaintiffs in the lawsuit filed Wednesday in Tallahassee. Others include leaders of the statewide teachers union and other school-related organizations and clergy from several denominations. They claim the constitutional amendment,...

School Choice Wisconsin fired back against charges the Milwaukee school voucher program discriminates against students with disabilities as alleged in a federal complaint filed yesterday by the American Civil Liberties Union and Disability Rights Wisconsin. In a press release, School Choice Wisconsin argued ACLU and DRW misappropriated public information about student disability enrollment: • Understates dramatically the number of special needs students served by private schools in the [Milwaukee Parental Choice Program]. • Fails to note the disparity in taxpayer support for MPCP pupils and pupils in private schools. • Fails to note that Disability Rights Wisconsin opposed a bill...

An expansive new voucher program, signed into Indiana law today, has been widely praised as a momentous victory for school choice and Gov. Mitch Daniels on the brink of his long-awaited presidential campaign announcement. In reality, the voucher program is a tactical victory for highly constrained choice won at the price of a broad strategic defeat for educational freedom. To see why, consider the bill's regulations. Most people would agree there are some topics about which every child in this country should learn. Historical documents, for instance, that are vital for understanding our shared American heritage: the Federalist Papers, the...

But Mithter Limbaugh! Mr. Limbaugh! Aren't you exthagerrating our thpeech patterns and attitudes in an attempt to mock us as the New Castrati? Thurely you can't be therious?Actually Rush Limbaugh has been DEAD ON in his impression of what the leftwing New Castrati are like as you can see in this incredible VIDEO which can be best described as Orwell trapped inside a strait jacket with a touch of the Village People thrown in. Note the close-minded totalitarian attitude of this particular specimen of New Castrati. My friend < shameless namedrop> Kerry Picket < /shameless namedrop> of the Washington...

Washington’s representative to Congress said Saturday she feels like the city was the victim of a “sellout” by Democrats in Friday night’s spending negotiations after the District of Columbia was the focus for two of the biggest policy fights. President Obama signed off on restricting the city from using its own taxpayer money to fund abortions, and agreed to restore the city’s school voucher program, which is popular with parents but opposed by many elected officials. “We knew that the House Republicans were on the attack when they took our vote in the Committee of the Whole on the first...

WASHINGTON (CNN) - The Supreme Court has tossed out a lawsuit challenging Arizona's tax breaks for voluntary donations benefiting private school scholarships, many of them Christian-based. The 13-year-old program provides dollar-for-dollar income tax credits for money given to "school tuition organizations," or STOs. The 5-4 ruling split along conservative-liberal lines. Writing for the majority, Justice Anthony Kennedy said taxpayers challenging the program lacked "standing" to continue the suit.

Recent student protests against tuition increases in the U.K. and California demonstrate that such upticks invoke strong reactions in student communities and can quickly spiral out of control. For two years President Obama and Congressional Democrats have pushed federal policies that separate low-income and minority students from quality education. It is only a matter of time before the breadth of these cuts becomes part of the national dialogue and minority students notice — and erupt. In March 2009, the President terminated the Opportunity Scholarship Program – school vouchers providing educational lifelines for 3,700 African-American students in the nation’s capital. In...

I am the result of a privatized education. I never spent one day in public school from preschool through high school and three years of that I spent being home-schooled. I’m sure having three children at home all day and being solely responsible for their educations drove my mother crazy but she did a great job. We didn’t come out of it with stunted educations or social lives. We thrived actually. Between friends in the neighborhood and being very active in our church and youth groups we were quite busy, our social lives were full and we ended up pretty...

In the future, the history books will not teach that Obama changed things for the better. No, the history books will teach that Obama's socialist programs and his fascists ways woke up a sleeping giant, that steamrolled the left out of power. Children of the future will learn that honest politicians like Chris Christie, Michele Bachmann, and others changed things for the better by standing up to the lies and propaganda of the left. Children will hear from their parents that America was almost lost by going down the same path as fai9led governments like France and Greece. They will...

Congress appears likely to keep the D.C. voucher program closed to new students but open to current ones, curtailing the hopes of advocates who had pressed for a full revival of the controversial program. The news is buried deep within a thousand-page omnibus spending bill released Monday by a joint conference of House and Senate Appropriations Committee members. The proposal allocates $13.2 million to vouchers and would tighten accountability measures for schools that participate in the program, which provides low-income D.C. students with up to $7,500 to attend private schools. Bringing further upheaval to the program, the Washington Scholarship Fund,...

Education: Barack Obama's choice for education secretary tried to run Chicago schools like a business. As with most monopolies without competition, the result was an inferior product at high cost.Arne Duncan, CEO of the Chicago Public Schools since 2001, has garnered much praise for his efforts to improve them. But his efforts have largely amounted to pouring new wine into old bottles with little to show for them. Duncan holds a degree in sociology, not education. He supports higher teacher pay and more training but has done little to loosen the teachers' unions' grip on education. Like the UAW, these...

I'm willing to countenance the possibility that Barack Obama genuinely believes that the DC voucher program is not helping the students who participate. Here's what I don't understand though: how come the Obama girls benefit from leaving the DC public school system? Surely, if it doesn't make any difference, the Obama girls would do just as well in ordinary, democratic, thoroughly American public schools as in an elitist Quaker institution. Wouldn't it bring wonderful diversity to both the school, and the Obama daughters, to have the children of the president rubbing shoulders with the children of the district's more ordinary...

Supporters of a celebrated school voucher program in Washington rallied near the mayor's office Wednesday to save the scholarships from being slashed by Congress -- nearly 40 percent of whose members send their own children to private schools. An estimated 1,000 parents, children and community leaders attended the afternoon protest in Washington's Freedom Plaza, where they called on D.C. politicians to help preserve a federal school choice program that currently assists more than 1,700 students with scholarships worth up to $7,500. "Several years ago many of us in this good city worked very hard to get a program going with...

We have learned a few things from this presidential campaign season and Barack Obama's first 100 days in office.  First, and to our untold horror, we have discovered that Barack Obama can in fact successfully hide who he is and his vision for our country.  Prior to the election, any person of good judgment could readily understand who this man was and where he would likely take this country.  The signs were all there.  Now in power, he enacts his socialist policies in plain sight with little concern that the American public will strenuously object.  So why is it that...