1ºFreedom from religion:
Our nation's key Founding Fathers were mostly Deists. They chafed under the British system that compelled them to join the British government's official Christian church, the Anglican church; so when they wrote our Constitution they not only voted overwhelmingly to not mention God anywhere in the Constitution, they also wrote the Establishment Clause into the First Amendment to give our nation freedom FROM religion in our government and laws, leaving religion to private life and personal choice.
When Founding Father Thomas Jefferson, author of our Declaration of Independence, was asked what the Establishment Clause meant, he pointed out that it was meant to create “a wall of separation” between our government and any religion.
CHARTER SCHOOL FINANCIAL FRAUD: The impartial, non-political watchdog Office of Inspector General of the U.S. Department of Education issued a report warning that so much taxpayer money is being skimmed away from America’s genuine public schools and pocketed by private corporate charter school operators that the IG investigation declared that: "Charter schools and their management organizations pose a potential risk to federal funds even as they threaten to fall short of meeting goals.”
There is NO SUCH THING as a “public charter school”. Charter school operators spend a lot of taxpayer money telling taxpayers that charter schools are “public” schools --- but they are not. As the Supreme Courts of Washington State and New York State have ruled, charter schools are actually private schools because they fail to pass the minimum test for being genuine public schools: They aren’t run by school boards who are elected by, and therefore under the control of and accountable to voting taxpayers. All — ALL — charter schools are corporations run by private parties. Taxpayers have no say in how their tax dollars are spent in charter schools.
CREDO RESEARCH: The Stanford University Center for Research on Education Outcomes (CREDO) — which is funded by pro-charter organizations — has been conducting years-long research into the educational quality of charter schools. And yet even this charter-school-funded research center’s findings are that charter schools don’t do any better academically than genuine public schools. Moreover, CREDO reported that in the case of popular online charter schools, students actually lose ground in both reading and math — but online charter schools are the fastest-growing type of charter school because they make it easiest to skim away public tax dollars.
RESEGREGATION OF SCHOOLS: The call for “school choice” arose after the U.S. Supreme Court ordered the racial integration of our public schools as segregationists sought to get public tax money to help enroll their kids in segregated private schools. Today, the big push is for private charter schools that masquerade as public schools and that are a leading factor in the resegregation of schools in America.
The racial resegregation of America’s school systems by the private charter school industry is so blatant and illegal that both the NAACP and ACLU have called for a stop to the formation of any more charter schools. The Civil Rights Project at UCLA summed it up, stating that charter schools are “a civil rights failure.” The catch-phrase “school choice” was concocted by racists following the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1954 Brown v. Board of Education ruling that required racial integration in public schools. After that, racist organizations used racist politicians to conduct a decades-long attack that underfunded public schools and crippled their ability to provide the full measure of education and to “prove” that public schools were “failing”. Public school “failure” is an issue manufactured by racists organizations and politicians.
https://www.forbes.com/si...d/#ab1fbdb27b64
2ºKristen M Curry there is a reason Medicare and Medicaid money can be used to fund hospitals that were created by religious organizations, and why it is different schools.
The difference is that under separation of church and state, taxpayers specifically can not be made to pay for religous activities. That includes teaching religion (why churches and religious schools shouldn’t be funded by secular funds). Healthcare is not a religious activity. Now, if the hospital’s policy is to ONLY treat people who adhere to a certain religion, public funding would be a problem.
So says the Supreme Court.
“The United States Supreme Court has said that faith-based organizations may not use direct government support to support "inherently religious" activities. Basically, it means you cannot use any part of a direct Federal grant to fund religious worship, instruction, or proselytization. Instead, organizations may use government money only to support the non-religious social services that they provide. Therefore, faith-based organizations that receive direct governmental funds should take steps to separate, in time or location, their inherently religious activities from the government-funded services that they offer.”
https://www.hhs.gov/answe...oney/index.html
3ºCody honey, you said “tell me why their share of tax dollars shouldn’t be appropriated as they see fit”. I answered - because unless we can do that with any of our tax dollars, why should the religious? And I don’t support this - it would be utter chaos. You just failed to understand my statement.
Then you asked why I wouldn’t support it.
I answered: because I don’t support organized religions, I don’t want public school money funneled to religious schools.
My only conclusion is that you don’t actually understand what you want and are full of self-righteous bluster without consideration of logistics or the constitution the conservatives claim to love.
4ºMy comment is not about adding religious instruction to public school. It's about allowing a private school to provide education that meet public funds standards, that a student may choose to use their tuition dollars on. California allows tuition vouchers, I believe. Norway is one country I can think of who does fund parochial schools, as long as they meet certain standards. Those standards can be stressful and abhorrent to parochial schools. So it's not like parochial schools necessarily want public funding. This article is about an alternative option. And there is precedence where vouchers of public money can be taken to private contracting facilities.
5ºDeanna Wilder
“ So school choice advocates argued hard that a recent Supreme Court case out of Montana could set a precedent for the Oklahoma school. The conservative majority of the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in that case that a publicly funded K through 12 scholarship program could apply to religious schools, and it didn't violate the Constitution. But supporters argue that that ruling should apply similarly to religious and private charter schools.
But the opponents of all this, including Oklahoma's own attorney general, who is a Republican, are arguing for separation. Essentially, they say separation of church and state means the new school shouldn't even exist. Regardless, there is sure to be a yearslong legal fight over all of this, and it could end up again in the conservative U.S. Supreme Court.”
https://www.npr.org/2023/...eligious-school
6ºSara Lucy we can do that with the tax dollars on this point. That was the entire point... You didn't even think about what I said. You just jumped to a canned "moving goal posts!" response so you didn't have to proceed with a legitimate rebuttal.
You don't have a statement. Your statement relies on hypotheticals. "It *would be* chaotic."
Do the religious pay taxes just like the secular? Yes. Do secular public school receive tax dollars without issues. Yes. So how did you make the logical jump that if religious schools received the same tax dollars that they pay into (and if we're being honest, collectively, they likely pay more than the secular individuals by volume), then there would be issues?
No one is forcing your or any children to go to those schools. So what's the real issue here besides your wonton hate of religious things and people?
7ºCody Holmes as long as you’re okay with tax dollars also going to Muslim schools, or Jewish schools, or any other religious schools equally.
I wonder, do religious schools discriminate, like, do you and your child you’ve forced and groomed into a religion have to be part of the cult or can someone who is not religious go to that school? Are those religious schools, that will receive the public’s tax dollars, held to the same educational standards as a public school or do those kids just get an A for memorizing the Bible and not reporting their priests misdeeds?
8ºSara Lucy "moving the goal post..." Right...
Says the gal that asked the questions that had nothing to do with the question of constitutionality of the issue at hand and to which I disagreed with the OP.
And thanks for sharing the irrelevant information. You don't support religious organizations. Cool. I don't like supporting secularist ones. You know the best way to ensure that doesn't happen? Allowing the government some capacity for individuals to choose where that money goes. I'm still not sure what your issue here is. It's like you agree with my position completely but have too much hubris to come around to seeing the most logical position.
9ºAj Gil good Lord… You have no conception of what separation of church and state actually means.
And it’s not “funneling taxpayer money.” It’s allowing those who pay taxes, the religious and irreligious alike, to determine where those dollars get appropriated.
Secularism and atheism is not the de facto neutral ground. They’re often more religious in nature than those religions they claim to despise. I mean, for goodness sake, this thread is a perfect example of that! I have zero issue with my tax dollars going to secular public schools. But you all have major issues with tax dollars, coming largely from religious tax payers, going to a religious school THAT NO ONE IS FORCING YOU TO GO TO. You’re all so insecure in your worldview that any remote chance that an opposing worldview may succeed, you aim to stop it. Talk about religious zealotry!
10ºMichael Kovar What question am I answering for you, exactly? Sounds like your fancy private school education was the subpar one between the two of us if you can't even formulate an original thesis, let alone do your own search for information. I've done nothing BUT look at data for the past several years, while you're busy dredging up tired accusations and lambasting hard-working Americans. If you want to continue to be part of the problem, by all means, you carry on, but it leaves you on shaky footing to critique the state of education while you're actively campaigning against it.