Word: vouchers
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Private schools like Spectrum had good financial reason to exclude religion. Under Milwaukee's pioneering school-voucher program, poor families got state-funded vouchers for tuition at public or private schools. The catch was that the vouchers could not be used at religious schools, on the ground that it would violate the principle of church-state separation...
Well, God can come back now, thanks to a ruling last week by Wisconsin's highest court that there is no such constitutional problem. The Wisconsin supreme court is the highest court ever to uphold religious-school vouchers, and both sides in the bitter national debate over vouchers are calling this a watershed decision. "It has amazing potential to shake up the political landscape," says Clint Bolick of the Institute of Justice, which argues for voucher programs around the country. But opponents insist the court got the First Amendment law wrong and say they will win if the case goes...
Supporters of the use of vouchers for religious schools say they're eager for a U.S. Supreme Court ruling. In fact, Bolick says his group would support an appeal of the Wisconsin decision even though it won below. But Barry Lynn, of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, says voucher backers are celebrating too soon. The current conservative court has never endorsed the kind of direct state funding of religious institutions that a school voucher represents. "Every parochial school is first and foremost a ministry," says Lynn. "The court has moved, but it hasn't moved that...
...called for abolishing the state board of education and wiping out tenure for teachers. This time, he advocates raising public school standards and giving more power to educators to make important decisions about what happens in the classroom. More in line with his old-style conservatism, he favors a voucher plan that would help children attending failing public schools to attend private ones...
...idea was getting nowhere until help came from Norquist's group and J. Patrick Rooney, a conservative Indiana insurance executive who had launched a privately funded school-voucher experiment in Indianapolis. Together they provided most of the financing, nearly half a million dollars, for the petition drive that put 226 on the ballot. Then California Governor Pete Wilson signed on. For Wilson, who as mayor of San Diego regularly battled public-employee unions in the 1970s, Prop. 226 also provided the satisfaction of payback to the teachers' union. Over the years, the C.T.A. has squared off against him on school...