As I’ve mentioned before, I’m a supporter of school vouchers in theory. If provided at the federal level, they hold the potential to correct the great funding disparities between schools in wealthy and poor areas that help to perpetuate those inequalities. Additionally, there is no particular reason that a private non-profit market cannot compete effectively in educating children. As we’ve all experienced education, and testing often provides a good measure to compare by, a market it education would certainly work better than in health care/health insurance.
However, there is one primary concern about a shift towards more private education that I share, the potential for parents (even with student agreement) to send their child to a religious school that goes beyond simply teaching religion alongside normal courses but allows religion to sabotage the quality of secular education, symbolized best by the creationism vs evolution battle.
I feel the goal of K-12 education should be to protect the ability of a child to self-determine as an adult, their parents’ decisions or their own potentially limited choices as a child should not risk their ability to freely choose among career paths, religions, etc. Heavy indoctrination in one religion without check can heavily limit future prospects. One major case in this is Wisconsin v Yoder, where the Supreme Court found that Amish parents could keep their children out of school after eighth grade. This is an unfortunate precedent that risks their ability to determine their future as adults.
This ruling is one step in the right direction.
The lawsuit (ACSI v. Stearns) was filed in federal court in August of 2005 by the Association of Christian Schools International, Calvary Chapel Christian School, and parents acting on behalf of their children, who were students at Calvary Chapel. They were challenging the University of California’s decision to refuse to accept several of their courses as fulfilling UC’s admissions requirements. The rejected courses covered the academic spectrum, with English, history, and science classes all failing to meet UC’s scrutiny. The common element in the rejected courses was that they did not actually teach the material that UC requires from incoming students. Instead, the rejected courses taught a radically wrong “Christian perspective”.
While case law is not very supportive of state coercion to attend public school (venue), it has been more supportive of state coercion to teach material that counters parental beliefs (content), notably in the realm of health/sex education (the awesomely named Brown v. Hot, Sexy, and Safer Productions, Inc.). Thus, pairing vouchers with a requirement that any recipient educational venue hold to a set of standards designed to protect student self-determination would be constitutional and help protect against this potential risk of vouchers. The only question is whether one could constitutionally deny students from attending schools (or receiving homeschooling) that does not comply with these standards.
- VWI
