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Freedom of religion in public schools
Separation of religion and school
Public school vouchers
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The 14th Amendment in the United States Constitution forbids states from denying any person life, liberty and property without due process of the law. It further states that any person, within a state’s jurisdiction, cannot be denied equal protection of its laws. This amendment protects all people.
Chief Justice Clarence Thomas, in a 2002 ruling, stated reasons why school choice should be protected under the 14th Amendment. Justice Thomas wrote in defense of school choice, “Whatever the textual and historical merits of incorporating the Establishment Clause, I can accept that the Fourteenth Amendment protects religious liberty rights. But I cannot accept its use to oppose neutral programs of school choice through the incorporation of the Establishment Clause. There would be a tragic irony in converting the Fourteenth Amendment's guarantee of individual liberty into a prohibition on the exercise of educational choice.” His ruling goes on to state,
Respondents advocate using the Fourteenth Amendment to handcuff the State's ability to experiment with education. But without education one can hardly exercise the civic, political, and personal freedoms conferred by the Fourteenth Amendment. Faced with a severe educational crisis, the State of Ohio enacted wide-ranging educational reform that allows voluntary participation of private and religious schools in educating poor urban children otherwise condemned to failing public schools. The program does not force any individual to submit to religious indoctrination or education. It simply gives parents a greater choice as to where and in what manner to educate their children. This is a choice that whose with greater means have routinely exercised. The State has a constitutional r...
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...her, L., Schimmel, D. and Stellman, L. (2007). Teachers and the Law. 7th ed. Boston: Pearson Education. P186-187.
Kintisch, B.,Zelno, S.. (2002). Vouchers (SB 1) and the Law. Available: www.elc-pa.org. Last accessed 16th Mar 2011.
Smith, G. (2010). Education Vouchers Gain Ground. Available: http://www.thestate.com/2010/11/21/1570848/school-choice-gains-ground.html. Last accessed 16th Mar 2011.
Speel, R. (2011). Education vouchers would violate constitution. Available: http://www.pennlive.com/editorials/index.ssf/2011/02/education_vouchers_would_viola.html.
The Center for Education Reform. (2011). Choice Options State by State. Available: http://www.edreform.com/printer_FVersion.cfm. Last accessed 16th Mar 2011.
WestEd. (1999). What we know about vouchers the facts behind the rhetoric. Available: http://www.WestEd.org. Last accessed 16th Mar 2011.
The 14th Amendment was made in 1868 to allow every person who was born in America or who had become an American citizen to have the same rights as any other citizen. Additionally, they were also a citizen of whatever state they lived in. No state in America was allowed to make laws that limit US citizens’ rights and protection, execute people, imprison people or take their property away without a legal process.
There has been a lot of controversy over this issue mainly because of the importance of an education in a modern society. School choice initiatives are based on the premise that allowing parents to choose what schools their children attend is not only the right thing to do, but is also an important way for improving education. Instead of a one-size-fits-all model, School choice programs offer parents various options from which to pick the educational settings they believe will work best for their child. However, there is
The Supreme Court case in Elk Grove Unified School District v. Newdow result in a unanimous ruling that the phrase “under God” may remain in the Pledge of Allegiance as narrated in public school classrooms. The court made the decision because the atheist father did not have grounds to sue the school district on behalf of his daughter. While the ruling was made on the Flag Day, it did not meet the clear endorsement of the constitutionality of the pledge as sought by President Bush and leaders of Republican and Democratic Parties in Congress. Notably, the eight judges who participated in the case had voted to turn over a federal appeals court decision in 2003 that would have prohibited the use of the phrase in public schools as an infringement of the constitutional outlaw on state-sponsored religion. A majority of these justices i.e. five made that ruling on procedural grounds in which Michael A. Newdow, the atheist, did not have legal reasons to sue the school district (Lane, 2004).
The Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution affects us today by granting citizenship, civil rights, and congressional representation.
She realized that choice and accountability were not the answer, but that curriculum and instruction were more viable solutions to America’s educational dilemma. Ravitch suggests that to abandon public schools is to abandon the institution that supports our concepts of democracy and citizenship and to the promise of American life (Ravitch, 2011, p. 12-14). The idea of school choice is rooted in Milton Friedman’s essay concerning the government’s role in education. Friedman asserted that society should support and contribute to the maximum freedom of the individual or the family. He maintained that the government should provide vouchers to help support parents financially on their children’s education, which parents could use at the school of their choosing; so long as the school met set standards. Therefore, this creation of choice would stimulate competition, which Friedman believed would increase the development and improvement of nonpublic schools, as well as, create a variety of school options (Ravitch, 2011, p. 115). As a result of the choice movement, the public received three versions of school choice: voucher schools, private schools, and charter schools. Each of these schools receives public funding, but do not operate as traditional public schools, and are not managed by a government agency (Ravitch, 2011, p. 121). Charter schools became the most popular choice of this new
School Choice: Followed the ruling on compulsory education. Parents have a right to choose whether their children go to a private, parochial or public school, or they may choose to home-school. Parents must accept any responsibility for their choice.
It forbid the denial of life, liberty, and property without due process of law. On July 9th 1868, this amendment was ratified, and was directly used to prevent states from denying rights to the newly freed slaves. This new amendment declared that all former slaves were citizens of the United States, and were not to be denied of their birth rights. To put this into perspective, before the ratification of the fourteenth amendments former slaves were free in a sense, but were not considered citizens allowing people to take advantage of them, and is still a prevalent issue to this day. “By directly mentioning the role of the states, the 14th Amendment greatly expanded the protection of civil rights to all Americans and is cited in more litigation than any other amendment.”
The Fourteenth Amendment is what distinguishes the United States from any other democracy in the world. The Amendment truly is the charter of universal freedom because it guarantees that any person, black, white, Asian, female, or homosexual will have the same Constitutional guarantees as the next person. It deems that we are all equal under the law, meaning we are all equal under the Constitution and should govern ourselves accordingly. We are warranted the same rights, protection, privacy and due process under the law as any other American citizen regardless of race, age, religion or sexual orientation.
The importance of the 14th Amendment has always been as misunderstood as it has been profound. In July 1868, when the amendment was finally ratified by the states, The Nation commented that it had “been so long before the people that the average reader has very likely forgotten just what it is.” As the recent idiocies have shown, that is only more true now.
Mead, Sara, and Andrew J. Rotherham. A Sum Greater Than Its Parts: What States Can Teach Each Other About Charter Schooling? Rep. Education Sector, 2007. Print. The. Research Center: After-School Programs.
William Paul Wanker and Kathy Christie. Peabody Journal of Education, Vol. 80, No. 2, Federalism Reconsidered: The Case of the No Child Left Behind Act (2005), pp. 57-72
Public School Choice is an easy program to understand and it contains many advantages but also many disadvantages. Public School Choice is when parents can elect to send their children out of a school that has not made adequate yearly progress for two consecutive years into a school that has made progress. (McClure, 2002) If there are no available schools within the original school district, then a family can choose to send their children to another district. This only happens when the other schools in the original district are all labeled as ‘underachieving schools’ and have not made the adequate yearly progress. (McClure, 2002)
Leaming, J. (n.d.). Voucher programs propt debate over meaning of separation of church and state. Retrieved March 12, 2011, from www.freedomforum.org: http://www.freedomforum.org/packages/first/schoolvouchers/part2.htm
Furthermore, school vouchers are unconstitutional and public funds should not be used to fund any kind of religious organization. Back in 1971 was the first time that the Sup...
Fischer, L., Schimmel, D., & Stellman, L. (2007). Teachers and the law (7th ed.). Boston, MA: Pearson Education, Inc.