Conservatives are typically “strict constructionists” when it comes to the law and the Constitution. But not, apparently, in North Carolina.
The state Constitution says unequivocally that public dollars are to be users “exclusively” for public schools. The Legislature could try to change the Constitution but they decided instead that it doesn’t mean what it says. The Legislature has appropriated $10 million of public money that may be spent in private and religious schools.
“Those schools, which can range from religious schools with several students to a home school of one, are not subject to state standards relating to curriculum, testing and teacher certification and are free to accept or reject students of their own choosing, including for religious or other discriminatory reasons.”
As a plaintiff’s attorney put it:
“North Carolina’s voucher program is unique. No other voucher program in the country allows the receipts of vouchers by private schools that can be unaccredited; employ unlicensed uncertified teachers — including teachers who don’t even have a high school diploma; employ teachers and staff without performing a criminal background check; teach no science or history; teach only the recitation of religious texts; and discriminate against students with disabilities. In the absence of standards, North Carolina stands in a class of its own.”
— Burton Craige
on behalf of challengers in the Hart case”
Is there anyone who believes that this program will improve education?
Interesting that conservatives in North Carolina believe that the wording of the Constitution doesn’t mean what it says. They are now “loose constructionists.” The state Constitution says what they want it to say. They have no fidelity to the actual words in the Constitutuon, only to their ideology
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Kurt Gödel, the mathematician, said he found a flaw in the Constitution that allowed a path to dictatorship. He didn’t elaborate, but perhaps strict constructionism is not the best approach.
To label this program “unique” might be the understatement of the year!
State money with no testing required? Sounds like it’s time for the public schools to find religion.
TAGO!
Made me smile.
Yes, all public schools need a “come to Jesus” moment. Am I right? Am I right? Can I get an “Amen” to that?
Amen to that but which Jesús?? I’ve know a number of Jesús over the years.
I’m serious, the public schools should convert to Pastafarian public and dump the tests.
What’s the litmus test for what a valid ‘religion’ is?
The Air Force Academy has a Wiccan worship center, just sayin’.
Yes, but the Air Force Academy, like many colleges and universities it has a worship center (very appropriately designed Space-Age cathedral, imo) open to all religious groups.
Sorry, didn’t mean to sound like I’m against religious inclusion. My point is, “not subject to state standards relating to curriculum, testing and teacher certification”, once special rights are granted based on religion that everyone else does not have access to, it’s a slippery slope.
TC,
I I hope that if you are proselytizing for Hs Noodly Appendages that you are properly attired. Would want the wrath of His Noodly Appendages to come down upon your more than heathen soul.
Strict constructionism my Aunt Fanny. Overlooking the first half of the Second Amendment, butchering large portions of most of the other Amendments. They’re in favor of “strict constructionism” when it suits their purposes, just like “states rights”.
In my opinion, this is where a group like ALEC has hurt NC. “Conservative” leaders here have gotten accustom to following an agenda set by someone else, it seems, and so I don’t think they really have been very pensive about what our citizens want and how that weighs against the constitution. It is also an easy way to feel OK about sending your own child to a private school when you can rationalize that all children in NC have a shot at doing same with the opportunity scholarship. There’s a permissive attitude about allowing for “vouchers,” because then it feels like we’re all equal in the eyes of opportunity.
I don’t think proponents look at it from a stance of improving education, Diane. I think they look at it from the position of improving the human condition in the eyes of ideology. It’s a way to hide children from secularism and to condone faith practices publicly, above all else.
(For those on the blog who like to read one sentence, make a universal out of a particular, generalize and mock, I am not in favor of vouchers. But I do try to understand the viewpoint of those who are pushing for them because that’s how I roll. So back off if you are loaded and ready to taunt me for thinking). I work hard on behalf of standing up for public schools in NC. I also was raised in a strict religious home (albeit my parents are pretty liberal democrats) and so I understand how it can be hard to compartmentalize a vision of faith against common resources, and likewise how it can be satisfying to think you are helping poor people by allowing them to get at what rich people have (albeit that is not what pooled resources on behalf of a community are really for). I believe vouchers are short-sighted, and I don’t believe they will necessarily carry the same outcomes those pushing for them think they will. And I agree, the language in the state constitution seems pretty clear. I suppose they could get around that by just saying it is a different pool of money than that set aside for public education. But we all know it was cut from public education so that no additional revenue would have to be raised for the project of opportunity scholarships.
I’m beginning to wonder if a silent majority in this state won’t truly realize the value of strong and well-supported public schools until they are gone (hopefully they won’t ever be gone, but it seems many people find their value to be dubious; or maybe they just like being “disruptive” because it’s in vogue). That said, as recent as the 1980s, I recall that NC’s government had money set aside to reward a child if they memorized the Catechism (or at least that’s what I was told).
Joanna your post is thoughtful. I think it’s important to understand the more fundamentalist southern tradition, which tends to support keeping govt out of its religion/ daily life (hence a predilection for unfunding govt)– important, because politicians take advantage of that religious motivation, twisting it to serve power-broker agendas. The northeastern culture leans opposite– we are historically tied to the pilgrim motivation to keep religion out of govt so as to avoid religious persecution.
A consequence of the neoliberal virus infecting both political parties is a shift in support toward letting religion into government through the back door. An example: the 2013 kerfuffle over whether Catholic hospitals had to provide employee health insurance for birth control. My mother, a staunch & religious northeasterner from a mixed Protestant/ Catholic background, was sturdily pro: “if they want federal support, they have to follow federal law”. That position did win out (more or less). Yet there were plenty of neoliberal opinions bandied about during the debate, which can be summarized as, “if the Catholics are willing to take on some of the govt’s burden of caring for the sick, let them have their rules.”
That’s the 2-faced position of NC govt here: if religious country folks want to cheaply and poorly educate their own, tell them it’s religious freedom; meanwhile cut way back on public schools and walk the profit to the bank.
What is so weird about NC’s school voucher plan is that the good Christian fundamentalist taxpayers are helping support the Greensboro Islamic Academy, the largest single recipient of the voucher largesse.
bethree5—thank you. I enjoyed reading your comment.
Liberals generally don’t care for states’ rights or the Tenth Amendment, until the subject is marijuana or education.
Liberals don’t pretend to be “strict constructionists”. They recognized that a document written 200+ years ago is going to need some interpretation.
Keep bouncing the political label football.
Serves no purpose but to disunite educators to take action.
Why should there be any standards when Indiana tax dollars can fund failing private schools? Unbelievable that our GOP dominated legislators, and our Tea Party Governor Pence, would consider such a bill. They are CRAZY!! Why would we want to have our schools/personnel accredited when we have a free enterprise system that lets private schools make a fat paycheck with subpar education for our kids??
Indiana Senate just passed Senate Bill 500 on third reading: If this bill passes the House, SCHOOL ACCREDITATION WILL BECOME OPTIONAL IN INDIANA! Call the Indiana Senate to voice your opinion of this action — 800-382-9467 and your State Representative at (800) 382-9842. The state reps have yet to vote on this and will likely vote on it (same name, Senate Bill 500) in the next couple of days. You can also email your rep or senator by using this process: h(or s) for house or senate followed by your district @iga.in.gov As an example, my representative, Bill Fine, would be h12@iga.in.govcar
NOTE THE LAST TWO SENTENCES in this summary below.
The explanation of the bill as on the IGA website:
Senate Bill 500
Education deregulation. Makes comprehensive revisions to the Indiana Code relating to all aspects of the administration of schools and school corporations and the education of students from pre-kindergarten through grade 12. Repeals various obsolete provisions and provisions that limit local control of schools. Establishes a school reporting oversight committee to review all reporting requirements by the state for schools. Authorizes public agencies to charge a search and detection fee of $20 per hour for certain public information requests. Expands the list of items for which a state agency may not impose a fee under the public records law, and further regulates the public records fees that state agencies may charge. Removes a requirement that a local government authority awarding a public work contract to a bidder other than the lowest bidder must state in the authority’s minutes or memoranda the factors used to determine the bidder awarded the contract. Provides that school accreditation is optional for schools. Makes conforming and technical amendments.
The Outback Steakhouse model, ‘no rules, just right’.
Asa former Indiana teacher I am disgusted by the GOP’s endless campaign there to destroy public education. Back in the 1920s when the KKK was politically powerful there the Klan’s Grand Dragon, D.C. Stevenson, was convicted of abducting, raping and murdering a young woman who was an educator. The antics of Daniels, Pence and their GOP accomplices evokes that memory.
In the south the KKK liked public schools because they were segregated.
We might note that the largest single recipient of North Carolina’s voucher voucher largess is the Greensboro Islamic Academic.
Reason why SEPARATION of CHURCH AND STATE is soooooo important.
Gross! Thanks for this update, Diane.
Religious education, sure…public education, not so much.
In the 1960s, my mother received her certification in teaching from the state of Virginia (with reciprocity in NC) via her Masters in Christian Education. The school where she received it (PSCE) no longer exists, and I doubt a state would grant certification based on training to be an educator in a religiously affiliated school anymore. That said, she was a wonderful and well-respected teacher. Also interesting to note is that NC’s constitution begins Article IX with the words “religion, morality and knowledge.” I think the issue at hand relates to the new diversity in our state (and others) whereby the groups who established and pushed for education provisions in the 19th Century were often religious leaders. It’s a culture clash or growing pains we have going on, if nothing else. A lot was taken for granted in terms of assumed ideology of right and wrong, good and bad, valuable and not valuable in our schooling right up until recent decades in NC (where protestants were the majority). While the answers seem obvious to those of us who value public schools as the best situation in a democratic republic for the values students learn about community and the goal of equitable distribution, some of the debates that are transpiring here bring very poignant questions to the surface about where we have come from and where we want to go, collectively.
United States Constitution, which is found in Article VI, paragraph 3, states that:
The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.
Federal law trumpts state law…in theory. Cecil Bothwell, an atheist who in 2009 won an election for a Asheville, North Carolina city council seat, was almost unseated by local critics who pointed to a provision in North Carolina’s constitution that prohibited nonbelievers from being elected. This provision of the state constitution of North Carolina is similar to provisions in Arkansas, Maryland, Mississippi, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Texas.
Arkansas,
No person who denies the being of a God shall hold any office in the civil departments of this State, nor be competent to testify as a witness in any Court. Article 19, Section 1:
Maryland,
That no religious test ought ever to be required as a qualification for any office of profit or trust in this State, other than a declaration of belief in the existence of God; nor shall the Legislature prescribe any other oath of office than the oath prescribed by this Constitution. Article 37
Mississippi, :
No person who denies the existence of a Supreme Being shall hold any office in this state.Article 14, Section 265
North Carolina, Article 6, Section 8
The following persons shall be disqualified for office: Any person who shall deny the being of Almighty God.
South Carolina,
No person who denies the existence of a Supreme Being shall hold any office under this Constitution.Article 17, Section 4:
Tennessee,
No person who denies the being of God, or a future state of rewards and punishments, shall hold any office in the civil department of this state.Article 9, Section 2:
Texas,
No religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office, or public trust, in this State; nor shall any one be excluded from holding office on account of his religious sentiments, provided he acknowledge the existence of a Supreme Being. Article 1, Section 4:
Source: http://americanhumanist.org/HNN/details/2012-05-unelectable-atheists-us-states-that-prohibit-godless
I don’t think there have been any legal challenges to the “faith based initiatives” installed in the federal architecture by Bush.
Vouchers are the most efficient way to secure “schooling” segregated by race, religion, gender, social class and so on. Vouchers are an efficient path to a not-many-frills private education with public dollars. But that voucher perk also comes at the expense of public education and the prospect that each generation will value reasoned discussion and debate in civic life.
Laura, in NC there was a group who tried to keep an anti-theist from running for office, but it was overturned by the U.S. “no religious test.”
I think there is still a law on the books that you can’t ride your house down the center of the street after 4:00 also.