Justice Stevens on School Vouchers, do you agree?

[usregimechange]

"The voluntary character of the private choice to prefer a parochial education over an education in the public school system seems to me quite irrelevant to the question whether the government’s choice to pay for religious indoctrination is constitutionally permissible...

Admittedly, in reaching that conclusion I have been influenced by my understanding of the impact of religious strife on the decisions of our forbears to migrate to this continent, and on the decisions of neighbors in the Balkans, Northern Ireland, and the Middle East to mistrust one another. Whenever we remove a brick from the wall that was designed to separate religion and government, we increase the risk of religious strife and weaken the foundation of our democracy."

Do you agree with Justice Stevens?

[usregimechange]

1. Sorry, here is the citation.

ZELMAN V. SIMMONS-HARRIS (00-1751) 536 U.S. 639 (2002)
234 F.3d 945, reversed.
http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/00-1751.ZD.html

[usregimechange]

2. Justice Breyer agrees:

"I join Justice Souter’s opinion, and I agree substantially with Justice Stevens. I write separately, however, to emphasize the risk that publicly financed voucher programs pose in terms of religiously based social conflict. I do so because I believe that the Establishment Clause concern for protecting the Nation’s social fabric from religious conflict poses an overriding obstacle to the implementation of this well-intentioned school voucher program. And by explaining the nature of the concern, I hope to demonstrate why, in my view, “parental choice” cannot significantly alleviate the constitutional problem." Ibid

[usregimechange]

3. More from Breyer (Clinton appointee):

"I do not believe that the “parental choice” aspect of the voucher program sufficiently offsets the concerns I have mentioned. Parental choice cannot help the taxpayer who does not want to finance the religious education of children. It will not always help the parent who may see little real choice between inadequate nonsectarian public education and adequate education at a school whose religious teachings are contrary to his own. It will not satisfy religious minorities unable to participate because they are too few in number to support the creation of their own private schools. It will not satisfy groups whose religious beliefs preclude them from participating in a government-sponsored program, and who may well feel ignored as government funds primarily support the education of children in the doctrines of the dominant religions. And it does little to ameliorate the entanglement problems or the related problems of social division that Part II, supra, describes. Consequently, the fact that the parent may choose which school can cash the government’s voucher check does not alleviate the Establishment Clause concerns associated with voucher programs." Justice Breyer

[usregimechange]

4. self delete

[TaleWgnDg]

5. The bottom line here is that Rehnquist and the rest in the majority

The bottom line here is that Rehnquist and the rest in the majority twist words to achieve their own end result. However, the constitutional bottom line is that public taxpayer's monies should NEVER fund religious institutions, p-e-r-i-o-d. And, here the majority in Zelman (SCOTUS syllabus text) say it's okay. WTF? Quite a slippery slope of subjectiveness, i.e., the justices on SCOTUS may twist public taxpayers monies to fund religion as per the justices own choice to do so or not. Since when is a personal agenda a correct analysis of constitutional law? Eh. Since the rightwingnuts have taken over the SCOTUS bench -- Rehnquist, O’Connor, Scalia, Kennedy, and Thomas.

[usregimechange]

6. Yep and it is fixin to get worse.

[ixion]

7. I'm for school choice, but not at taxpayer's expense, and I agree

with the sentiment of the judge.

I do think, though, that if you choose to not put your children in public education that you ought not have to pay taxes related to public education in the area.

Just my opinion.

[usregimechange]

9. Generally "school choice" refers to school gov. vouchers.

does it not?

[Tesha]

13. Not necessarily.

> Generally "school choice" refers to school gov. vouchers, does it not?

Not necessarily. Some school districts run "magnet schools", "application
schools", "voc/tech schools", etc. that allow parents to choose a different
environment for their kids than a run-of-the-mill generic public school
education.

A few districts let the parents choose among the various run-of-the-mill
facilities as well, so if you don't like the Shady Valley School, you can
send your kids to the Mountaintop School instead (although it's usually
constrained by availability of space for your kidlettes).

Tesha

[Mind_your_head]

11. I agree with the judge.

if you choose to not put your children in public education that you ought not have to pay taxes related to public education in the area.

I don't think that argument works very well, b/c then you would have singles, childless couples, elderly etc. also claiming that they shouldn't have to pay public education taxes (and I have heard folks in those categories complain about that already).

I suggest that a good solution might be some sort of tax CREDIT given to parents based on the private school tuition they pay (I believe this is already done in some areas).

One thing people don't often think about is that IF all the private schools were to suddenly all shut down and those thousands of students went streaming into the public system, it would just be a catastrophic overload. Heck, many of the school systems are overloaded now.

Just another opinion :-)

edit: changed subject line to simply say "I agree with the judge"

[Greyhound]

12. So since I have no kids, nor ever intend to have kids, I shouldn't

have to pay school taxes? I think this is a disaster in the making. We all have to live in the world while the kids of today run it, so I think we all need to support the education of our citizens.

[Festivito]

8. Not that it will be heard...

Whereas school choice is irrelevant to Constitutional permissibilty, I find his assertion, invoking analogy of brick removal opposite and in retrospect incorrect. Religious strife has worsened. Its unrest has turned normally concerned citizens into single minded single issue voters against their own financial best interests, instead voting for their religious rights. An act they should not have to do in this country.

School choice can and has helped POSITIVELY fund public schools. I think it would help our country.

My view of why we have this problem is that we no longer respect the words of the first amendment, replacing it, REPLACING IT with separation as the law. Separation should be the effect of the law, not the law. Not that anyone around here has yet to understand the difference or answer to it cogently.

[usregimechange]

10. My guess is Madison and Jefferson had a different perspective

as a result of experiencing significant religious conflict. The early colonists did as well. How does using public funds to fund private schools help to fun public schools?

[Festivito]

14. I hope they did.

Parochial teachers are often paid less. The cost of educating is reduced. Parents are more involved, so the cost of outings, for example, is reduced. Extra payments by a congregation supplant other costs such as overhead.

Cost to parents at the school I attended was under $1500 per elementary student. And we took some severely troubled students.

But, we could not take physically capped students. Such are very expensive, and I do not know numbers on the relative mix.

In my Detroit, $6000 per public student is spent. This includes handicapped funding. Outside Detroit in wealthy suburbs they spend over $12000 per student. My brother's high-end school charges over $20000 per student.

I'd estimate elementary cost at about $3000 per student, where we did it for $1500. That would be a savings of $1500 per student given a $1500 voucher.

As it is, there is tax relief for some private schools, not ours. So, about $500 of the payed cost is returned to the parents instead of a voucher. However, the entire cost payed by those at our school allowed no such return for our parents. The entire $3000 was given to the public school system. Per year, per student.