Buffman

<a href="http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/local/state/orl-locmcbride11051102may11.story" target="_blank">http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/local/state/orl-locmcbride11051102may11.story</a>

(Extract)

The voucher program pays private-school tuition for children from low-income families.

Janaysia Grady, a 14-year-old eighth-grader, said the program allowed her to transfer to the Orlando Christian Academy in January.

"There was a lot of fighting and jealousy," she said of her old public school. "At the private school, my education is getting better. We have Bible study, and I learn more about God."

By law, businesses in Florida can choose to redirect their corporate income taxes from state coffers to fund vouchers.

The program is capped at $50 million a year, with about $33 million expected to be spent this year. In Central Florida, 500 poor students received vouchers this semester.

McBride said the program reflects a pattern by Gov. Jeb Bush of favorable treatment of businesses at the expense of public schools. He said it drains money from the state's classrooms, a claim the Bush campaign disputes.

(End extract)

In my opinion this is a direct violation of the 1st Amendment. The state government is "unconstitutionally" allowing corporate taxes, that should be going directly into the state treasury for secular uses, to be diverted to voucher programs that directly support religious school proselytization.

What is rather sad is the fact that not even a Democratic gubenatorial candidate has the courage to call this program what it really is...an organized plundering of the taxpayer's treasury by religious zealots at the expense of the public school system.

GaryP

I agree with your concerns. Many states have been aiding religious schools for decades, the voucher idea is just more of a direct route.

Here in Ohio, the taxpayers have been transporting kids to religious schools for a long time at great expense. There is a catholic elementary near my house and I often see a nearly empty school bus (maybe 6 kids) going there in the morning from a public school district which is close to 15 miles away. Of course, they pick up the kids after school too.

I read that Ohio spends enough on parochial schools which would make up for practically all the public shools which are dangling near the red ink.

The Supreme Court ruling on the Cleveland voucher system will be very noteworthy. I fear that it will be 5-4 favoring vouchers. The dabate will then become a policy debate at the state level.

Public school advocates will need to be able to make a good case againse expanding these programs.

Buffman

One need only harken back to late 1995 and Gov. Voinovich's collaboration with the Catholic Bishops to better appreciate how insidious the "Family Choice" education voucher system really is. It has very little to do with family choice or education, but a great deal to do with financially propping up religious belief systems unable to stand on their own dogma.

The Cleveland case will most likely tell us more about how deeply the religious right has prenetrated the judicial system than what is actually constitutionally legal vis-a-vis C-S separation.

I migtht wager that religious, right wing, Protestants have long been envious of the successful financial lobbying efforts of our elected representatives by the American Catholic Church. That Church has, perhaps less overtly and publicly, fed at the taxpayer money trough for quite some time under the so-called umbrella ploy of doing social good.

Oresta

The Cleveland case on the constitutionality of vouchers heard by the SCOTUS in February is expected to rule in July. I agree, it doesn’t bode well for the health of the First Amendment .

<a href="http://www.edweek.org/ew/newstory.cfm?slug=24vouch.h21" target="_blank">http://www.edweek.org/ew/newstory.cfm?slug=24vouch.h21</a>

Experpt:

For the life of me, I cannot understand how anyone can stand in a court of law and swear that voucher systems are not direct government support of religious institutions. A study of the Cleveland voucher system <a href="http://www.policymattersohio.org/voucherintro.html" target="_blank">http://www.policymattersohio.org/voucherintro.html</a> found most voucher students in religious schools from the first year of the program, and increasing over the next four years to virtually all participating students:

Excerpt:
If it walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck ....

The argument for vouchers is that they give parents a choice, but the only option financially feasible for most public school kids is religious schools. Private secular schools are typically high-end, middle class schools with tuition far above what most families can afford. The Christian coalition behind vouchers is well aware of this.

[ May 11, 2002: Message edited by: Oresta ]</p>

hezekiah jones

Hopefully O'Connor and Kennedy will prevent Rehnquist, Scalia, and Thomas from making their definitive statement on the establishment clause. This is a huge case for a variety of reasons.

By the way as far as I know nearly 80% of the students in the Cleveland voucher program never set foot in a public school in their lives so it's not clear to me how the system failed them.

Buffman

(Oresta: Another of your accurate and informative posts.)

I suspect that we both realize just how terrified the "Supremes," and the cowardly politicians, are about taking on the organized religions. They, like so many of us, have endured a lifetine of clever conditioning about the supposed role of religion in the moral advancement of the evolutionary beast called "Man." Thus, inside each critically thinking person is the niggling fear that just possibly anything that reduces the power and prestige of supernatural beliefs could result in unleashing untold chaos, immorality and misery across the face of the planet.

We have been easily conditioned to believe the very worst about ourselves because each of us recognizes the power of our own genetic drives. Unfortunately, Christianity is the worst perpetrator of this great lie because of its insistance that all humans are born in sin and remain sinners unless they accept the phoney biblical interpretations and hype of the master manipulators of dogma and doctrine.

If we continue to educate our children in the ways of superstition and myth, or allow them to continue to be indoctrinated by the salesmen and women of the same, then the future can only be a repetition of the hurtful and corruptive bigotries and insanities of the past.

The years before America's Constitutional enlightenment and liberation were filled with religious prejudice, bickering and outright mistreatment of anyone who was not of white protestant origins. This was the heritage from Christianity, not from morality or humanity. So why would the citizens of today work toward a restoration of that inequality and oppression? Yet that is exactly where we are headed if we do not challenge the misguided direction of those who sincerely believe that they know what is best for everyone else.

The separation of religion and government is the only philosophical and intellectual barrier that stands in the path of a return of the ignorance and mental slavery of the past. When that barrier is weakened or breached, no matter how noble sounding the reason, every liberty that we hold so dear is placed in jeopardy.

Jamie_L

We should go to Florida and set up an atheist school. Not a secular school, but an honest-to-no-god atheist school that teaches how irrational it is to believe in the supernatural. We'll bus in freethinking kids and use their voucher money. Then we'll see how much those fundies like their tax dollars paying for a sign out front of the school that says "God-less America".

Jamie

mac_philo

I don't really see the problem. The funding is to religious institution(s) and secular institutions. There is no coercion.

The facts are, public US schools in many areas are horrible, and giving the bureacrats more money is not going to solve it. If this program is shown to get results, I support it.

A hardcore atheist, I spent my US subsidized pell grants, stafford loans, and work study at a 'christian school.' So what? The precedent has been set for college students; the idea that it isn't applicable to elementary age students seems absurd. What's the message here--we're going to prop up a failing system using students from the lower and lower middle classes, but when it gets to be time for college anything goes?

As long as they have to follow a standardized science curriculum and aren't studying theological matters more than a certain portion of the day, I'm not going to rule these programs out of hand.

Dark Jedi

I agree with the sentiment of this, in et's entirety. My main holdout is simply the resistance of the whittle effect. Coalitions working for change use 2 tactics. Outright frontal assault on laws and lawmakers is one. The slow erosion, a little at a time of individual aspects they feel strongly about is the other. The two work hand in hand, really. While the outrageous "Teach Creationism in school" attack is going on in front, there's good old Pat Robertson at the back door saying "See, it's just a voucher system. Yeah, it might be used for religious purposes, but it's really about better education! It's nothing compared to that huge bluff we threw out front!"

Eventually they whittle the constitution in to a shape they like better.

Toto

There is a big problem with funding going to religious institutions, which is why the voucher system insists that the funding us just going to the parents, not the institution.

I see this problem with the whole situation: it is part of the strategy of the religious right to claim that public schools are failing, and that no amount of money will save them. I don't think the facts are there to support this, and I think that the motive of the people who say this is their desire to see public education fail and be replaced with religious education. I have known people who sent their kids to Catholic parochial schools because they gave a better education for the money, but I still object to any of my tax money shoring up the Catholic church.