There are a lot of serious flaws — unfixable flaws — with the “scholarship” bill that has been making its way through the state Legislature in recent days.
First, we should be working to improve public education by making public schools better, by finding more money for schools in urban districts and changing the funding mechanism to make it fairer. Creating a system in which the state gives tax credits to rich folks to create scholarships designed to siphon kids from the public schools into private — including religious — schools does not improve educational opportunity. It only exacerbates the gap between urban and suburban schools (the top kids get to escape failing schools) and endorses the privatization of public schooling.
Just as important, the bill would take public money — tax money — and hand it off to religious schools, an endorsement of religion that is a direct violation of the First Amendment prohibition against the state wading into religion.
This brings me to the quotation referenced in this post’s title, from one of the few top-notch political columnists in the state, Robert Braun of The Star-Ledger:
It is just plain wrong to use taxes to promote a religious message.
Simple. To the point. Too bad the people in Trenton do not seem to be listening.
- Send me an e-mail.
- Read poetry at The Subterranean.
- Certainties and Uncertainties a chapbook by Hank Kalet, will be published in November by Finishing Line Press. It can be ordered here.
- Suburban Pastoral, a chapbook by Hank Kalet, available here.
