Editor’s note: The following is a guest column written by James Finney, Ph.D., of Baton Rouge. This was first posted on his blog, Methodical, Musical Mathematician’s Musings, and we felt it was an important essay that addressed issues with the state’s flawed school voucher program. Rather than simply publishing a link to his post, Dr. Finney was gracious enough to allow us to re-post it in its entirety on LouisianaVoice. Dr. Finney is a math teacher with an interest in transparent and effective government. He grew up in South Dakota but has lived in Baton Rouge for more than 20 years.
His observations should not be interpreted as a criticism of the Catholic Church but rather an objective look at how the state’s voucher program has been mismanaged and vouchers paid in disproportionate amounts to church-affiliated schools by the Louisiana Department of Education.
By James Finney, Ph.D.
Did the headline get your attention? If so, that’s good. When I saw the details of voucher funding for 2014-15, I was startled at how much of the nearly $40 million in spending went to Catholic schools.
The total amount sent to the 131 voucher schools participating in the Student Scholarships for Educational Excellence program in 2014-15 was $39,486,798.20. This figure is reported in a spreadsheet I received from the Department of Education in response to a public record request. Of that, approximately two-thirds ($26,819,434.44) went to the 76 participating schools that are affiliated with the New Orleans Archdiocese and the Dioceses of Shreveport, Alexandria, Baton Rouge, Houma-Thibodaux, Lafayette, and Lake Charles.
A defender of the voucher program might suggest that most of the private schools in the state are Catholic, so it makes sense that most of the vouchers would be used in Catholic schools. The evidence says otherwise. There are 412 nonpublic schools listed in the state’s 2015-16 School Directory (which I received incidental to another public record request). Of those, 190 are identified by the state as being Catholic. So the Catholic schools are fewer than half the nonpublic schools, but they account for two-thirds of the vouchers. There is no easy way to compare total enrollment (Catholic vs. non-Catholic private schools) since the state does not appear to collect or report private-school enrollment data.
As mentioned earlier, 76 of the 131 voucher schools are Catholic. Of the remaining 55, nearly half (25) have a school name containing the word “Christian” and nine have a name containing “Lutheran”, “Living Word”, “Bishop”, “Baptist”, “Adventist” or “Bible”. And there’s Jewish Community Day School. So that leaves roughly 20 of the voucher schools that might be secular. So much for the separation of Church and State.
It’s interesting to rank the voucher schools by total amount paid in 2014-15: The top six schools account for more than $10 million, and the next 14 for more than another $10 million:
- St. Mary’s Academy (Girls) (C), Orleans (417): $2,606,160
- Hosanna Christian Academy (AG), EBR (390): $2,265,944
- Resurrection of Our Lord School (C), Orleans (466): $2,103,286
- Our Lady of Prompt Succor (C), Jefferson (208): $1,045,417
- St. Louis King of France School (C), EBR (182): $1,021,094
- 506087 Leo the Great School (C), Orleans (191): $1,016,667
Five of the most expensive voucher schools, and 17 of the top 20, are Catholic. The non-Catholic schools among the top 20 are Hosanna Christian Academy (No. 2 above), Evangel Christian Academy in Caddo Parish (No. 16) and Riverside Academy in St. John the Baptist Parish (No. 20).
One of the voucher schools appears to be a public school: Park Vista Elementary School in Opelousas (St. Landry Parish). It would be interesting to know the story on that school’s participation in the program, and where the students are coming from. The state sent the Parish an average of somewhere around $7,760 each for 19 students, contributing $150,000 to the local system’s bottom line. Compare that to the $5,570 that the state sent to St. Landry Parish Schools in Minimum Foundation Program (MFP) funding for each student who actually lived in St. Landry Parish.
Two of the schools that received vouchers are not even on the state’s list of nonpublic schools: Walford School of New Orleans received $17,717, and McKinney-Byrd Academy in Shreveport received $3,566. If they aren’t on the state’s list of nonpublic schools, why did they receive voucher payments? In 2015-16, the SIHAF K12 Learning Academy joined the ranks of voucher schools not on the list of nonpublic schools, and in 2016-17, Weatherford Academy in Westwego will be allowed to offer up to six vouchers and Children’s College in Slidell will be allowed to offer one or two vouchers. Go figure.
State Superintendent of Education John White would like us to believe that at an average of around $5,500 each the vouchers saves the state a lot of money. There’s a flaw in that argument. The average per child state share of the MFP in 2014-15 was only $5,185. So there might be a savings to local school districts, if those local districts had to educate fewer students with the same amount of local tax revenue. Unfortunately, there’s a huge loophole in the voucher program that allows students who have never (and probably would never) have been enrolled in a public school to get their private educations funded by the state. Maybe that’s why I can’t get a meaningful response to my request to the Department of Education in which I seek the records of how many voucher students had actually “escaped” public schools.
As an example of the fallacy of the vouchers-as-a-bargain-for-the-state argument, consider East Baton Rouge Parish Schools. In 2014-15, the state share of MFP was $4,165 per student. Of the 20 voucher schools within the district’s boundaries, the only school with an average voucher amount below $4165 was St. Francis Xavier School at $4,103. At least five voucher schools charged the state over $8,000 per student. For two schools, Most Blessed Sacrament and Country Day School of Baton Rouge, both the average tuition per student and the number of students each quarter were (illegally?) redacted from the records supplied by the state, so there’s no way to know how much each school charged the taxpayers per student.
The highest tuition rate ($9,000) was charged by Prevailing Faith Christian Academy in Ouachita Parish for its 31 voucher students. It appears that the schools get to set the rate the state pays for an education over which the state exercises no oversight, as long as there are at least a few families willing to pay that amount out of their own pockets. With no effective state oversight, there is no way to tell just how good (or more likely how bad) a bargain the state is getting by funding private education.
Meanwhile only 91 schools are accepting applications for new voucher students in 2016-17. Perhaps many of the private schools have realized that mixing public money and private education is a bad idea all around.
F 17 of February 20 (voucher school status for 2016-17, and Q1 enrollment for 2015-16)
11 of February 20 – 2014-15 SEE Enrollment and Funding (2014-15 voucher spending)
2014-15-circular-no-1156a—final-budget-letter—march-2015 (Look at “Table 3 Levels 1&2” tab, in columns AP and AT.)
Louisiana Voice 
I am not a Catholic nor did I graduate from a Catholic school. Having said that, I have seen the difference between public school graduates and Catholic school graduates. The latter can read, spell, punctuate, write, can do basic mathematics, are courteous and polite, understand civic responsibilities, respect their elders and their country.
The former…not so much.
I’m divorced and have no children and yet every year the parish Sheriff points an economic gun to my head and tells me that if I don’t pay pay property taxes to fund public schools he’s going to take my house and land. Given that situation, I would rather see the money extorted from me fund Catholic schools rather than public schools. At least I can see some results. Perhaps the state should contract with the Catholics to operate all the public schools. I’ll feel a lot better knowing my money isn’t being wasted.
Mr. Territo, I graduated from a public school and I believe I am better than average at reading and comprehension. And I believe I am courteous. Moreover, I have a daughter who is an elementary school teacher in a PUBLIC school and one of her students was a finalist just last week for State Elementary School Student of the Year. Her school is consistently one of the better schools in the state–public and private. You have made the classic mistake of painting all public school students and all public schools with the same broad brush and that is patently unfair and inaccurate. You sound a lot like Bobby Jindal—and that’s not a compliment. It was Jindal who told LABI that public school teachers have their jobs “by virtue of their being able to breathe.” I reminded him of that idiotic comment when the teacher at Sandy Hook stood between the shooter and a student and took a bullet for the child. She is no longer able to breathe, so Jindal should be happy.
Mr. Well:
Thank you for your reply. I would like to address several of the comments and assertions that you made. I promise I’ll try hard not to sound like Bobby Jindal.
I’ll start off by congratulating your daughter and her pupil. She must be very proud of her student and you must be very proud of your daughter. Both have achieved something-I know I’m misusing an absolute adjective and ask for your understanding-almost unique in the educational world.
But let’s take a reality break, shall we? And for that I’m going to ask you to think back to the probability and statistics classes you took in college and/or graduate school. Your daughter and her pupil are what is know as “statistical outliers.” That is they fall somewhere outside of the bulk of the data set. They are on the high end…probably two to three standard deviations above the mean.
Unfortunately there are statistical outliers on the low end as well. Most Louisiana legislators, about half of the U.S. Congress, many movie and TV personalities…I could go on but you tell me that you’re an outlier when it comes to comprehension so it would be pointless.
Allow me to digress a moment to address another of your comments before returning to my main topic. You stated that I made a “classic mistake” by “painting” all public schools with a “broad brush.” I went back and retread my initial post and I couldn’t find where I did any such thing. I base my opinions on my own observations. If I encounter someone who is particularly well spoken or otherwise appears to be “sharper” than normal, my standard practice is to try to ascertain their educational pedigree. And the answers I receive never vary.
My opinions and world view are shaped by what I see and hear, not from television (I don’t even have one), not from your blog (which I enjoy reading), not from third or fourth hand information, but from information I assimilate first hand.
Based on that information I have formed the opinion that the private school grads I have encountered are more prepared to be productive citizens than their public school counterparts. Now the dicey part…can that information be applied to the educational systems as a whole? In statistical terms, no. Can it be applied to at least part of the system? Again, no.
Recall that like you, I’m a public school graduate. But as you, I’m a statistical outlier. In college I majored in science, not “fuzzy” subjects with no right or wrong answers. I was married to a female who strived to spend $1 more than I made and I had a teenage stepdaughter whose entire vocabulary consisted of “gimme” and “I wanna.” I was ineligible for TOPS because I was too old so I had to work…at one point I had to get permission from the Dean of Students to hold more than one campus job simultaneously.
Yet I graduated Cum laude. I was Phi Beta Kappa (does anyone even know what that is anymore), Phi Kappa Phi, and so on.
In my professional life I’m a technical specialist for a U.S. Government agency. I have a part time job in law enforcement with an agency in Livingston Parish. In all of the spare time I have left over I own and operate my own business. In my professions I encounter an enormous variety of people ranging from criminals to multimillionaires. So I have made an enormous number of observations of an incredibly diverse population of races, professions, economic classes, religions, educational levels. Having said what I said about the technicalities of probability and statistics, I cannot help but believe that my observations are an indicator of reality…that the “average” private school graduate is significantly better prepared to become a productive member of society than the “average” public school grad.
I realize that my opinion is worth exactly what you paid for it: nothing. But you would do well to heed it. That is unless you’re one of those creatures that’s going to tell me exactly what I have seen and observed so my opinion has to be incorrect. But the fact is public schools are in trouble and Catholic schools “ain’t.” But before public schools can be fixed everyone has to admit that there are some serious problems, and that isn’t happening. Just look at the replies to my original post…as far as public schools go everything is just fine with sunshine and a cool breeze and a rainbow and unicorns frolicking in the meadow. Instead of admitting the truth, virtually every one of you put forth one exception to the dismal rule…one statistical outlier to (using your words) paint all public schools with a broad brush of optimism and good feeling and well being. I’m going to close with a warning: use extreme caution when walking with your head in the clouds or up your collective butts, because you might step into a pile of unicorn dung, slip and fall, and that would be the end of that.
PS: Could you possibly use your enormous popularity with Louisiana politicians to get me an appointment to the State Police Commission? 🙂
Territo, your perception-though shared by probably most middle and upper class folks certainly in this state-is based on anecdotes, little info/bad info (watch much Fox News along with their endless anecdotes supposedly substantiating the lamentable decline of pub ed in this nation, do ya?), and no doubt prejudice. Plus, you conveniently ignore this little thing called socioeconomics.
The Cath schools don’t administer state exams, except for the ACT (high schools). Toss out the more affluent (and not surprisingly, high performing) Cath schools, which of course don’t take voucher kids anyway, and I think you’ll find a dirty little secret that Catholic schools-and doubtlessly the state department of education-are aware of but of course don’t publicize (drum roll please……):
When you correct for socioeconomic status, public school students do about as well as Catholic school students. Plus, the more “middle class” public high schools sometimes do better than socioeconomically similar Catholic schools even at the school level.
Cheers.
Thank you for your reply. I’d like to take a moment to address a few of your comments. You imply that my perceptions are based on various factors, all of which are incorrect. First off, I don’t have a television…I prefer to spend what little precious spare time I have reading, hiking, or practicing skills required in my professions…so to imply that I base my opinions on Fox News is inaccurate. I base my opinions on first hand events, personal interactions, and written correspondence incidental to business.
If I encounter a person that is particularly well spoken I usually make an effort to ascertain their educational lineage. Occasionally I’ll run across a Baton Rouge High grad, but otherwise they’ll be a private school product, usually from the Catholic program or from Episcopal High. I never stated that this was a statistically accurate survey (I assume you can understand statistics and probability) of competing educational systems, but it is an accurate indicator of the people I interact with.
I recently had the opportunity to read something written by the PRESIDENT of a local union. I’m amazed it wasn’t written in crayon! Certainly a sixth grade student could do better.
I once had the opportunity to edit a research paper written by my second wife who was in graduate school at LSU at the time. Yes, graduate school. I asked her which junior high school student wrote her paper for her (that might partially explain why she is now my ex wife).
On the other side is my nephew who is a product of the Catholic education system. He is now attending Tulane on a full scholarship. By the way, his family is barely above the poverty level and he attended a Catholic high school on scholarship-there’s no way his father could have afforded the tuition (he was raised by his father and grandparents his worthless mother having walked out on he and his sister when they were very young).
In closing, I apologize for being long winded. But I found it necessary to elaborate on the various factors I use to form my opinions and beliefs. I don’t rely on Fox or CNN or Time magazine or the writer of this blog. I base my opinions on what I have seen and read with my own eyes, heard with my own ears, and information gleaned from follow-up efforts I’ve made. Enjoy your day.
Public schools by their very nature – unlike non-public schools – serve all children regardless of their status. That means low income, special needs kids including mentally, physically and learning disabled, gifted and talented, emotionally and behaviorally disordered, all the children that most private schools don’t accept and cannot educate. Special services are expensive and the average non-public school does not have the resources or the will to provide those services, vouchers or privately paid tuition notwithstanding.
Disaggregate the test scores of public regular education students from special needs kids and the performance looks a lot better.
And by the way, Louisiana has a disproportionate number of special needs and low income students compared to other states. So our public schools start out behind the norm from the get-go. Non-pubs are not going to serve those kids, especially in small towns and rural areas where few service providers exist.
The siphoning of many millions which constitutionally should go to public education has caused great hardships in the public school system while much maligned public educators (who haven’t had a raise since Jindal) have contributed personal funds to help make up monies lost.
One small example is my classroom in one of the best rated parishes in LA. Due to overcrowding and the lack of funds to provide temporary buildings, my class was housed in a small computer lab, then a non-classroom off the cafeteria. Money is so tight that absolutely no furnishings were provided by the school system – no desk, no computer desk, no shelving, only outdated computers and an unreliable printer. We pieced together furniture donations and I bought my own desks and additional storage units. Some student shelving was made by laminating corrugated cardboard 3-4 layers deep.
This is too short a venue to enumerate the ways Jindal and Teach For
America, 5 week wonder, John White, have systematically destroyed public education and circumvented, no flouted, transparency laws. Tom’s articles are full of examples. Unfortunately, the hundreds of thousands of dollars poured into LA to stack BESE with enemies of public education defeated ALL who supported public education. And one of Governor Edwards’ three appointees came directly from a position of Superintendent of Catholic schools.
Although White pretends the cost of supporting non-public schools is $5500 a student, the cost is millions more. Each family whose students are not in public schools are rewarded with a $5000 PER CHILD deduction from state income taxes. And those individuals and even corporations who donate “scholarships” to non-public schools are allowed bottom line deductions, after which 95% of the monies are kicked back to them.
When trying to close billions in deficits I cannot help but wonder why both of those tax evasion schemes were not undone. Of all the possible ways to eliminate tax loopholes did our new Governor who absolutely supports public education address those two?
When calculating loss to public education one should add the millions paid by LA to Teach For America to provide NON-CERTIFIED teachers for charter schools. Catholic schools have never required certified teachers. Public schools still require bona fide credentials and our educators continue additional hours of study annually to perfect our skills.
Once a high-maintenance woman driving a new Escalade questioned my RECALL JINDAL sticker. Our heated conversation ended with her final question, “Why should my taxes go to pay for someone else’s child to go to school?” I had no answer for such a person. Access to a free public education is a privilege on which our nation has flourished. That vouchers and charters are well-intentioned solutions to help students is the largest lie of a generation.
From Bush’s bogus NCLB through the current scourge of vouchers and charters, the destruction of public education is transparently and simply a means to divert yet another piece of the tax pie to corporate and wealthy interests.
Here’s your answer: “For the same reason others had to pay taxes to pay for your education. For the same reason others pay taxes for you to drive on roads they may never travel. For the same reason others pay for fire protection so the fire department may save your home even though their homes don’t catch fire. For the same reason others pay taxes so that your garbage may be picked up on a regular basis. So that children may be educated to be productive citizens to continue to make nice Escalades, flat screen TVs, etc. so that you might continue your standard of living. In short, for the betterment of society as a whole.
Certain “entitled” people have no concept of “the common good.” It’s all about them.
As you said, Tom, these people have no concept of the fact – that everyone should pay a little in taxes so everyone will benefit from services in public safety and order. Wonder what if would be like if we paid no tax whatsoever, but had to pay for each service used – police and fire protection, use of roadways, the cost of food safety inspections added to grocery and restaurant bills, school tuition for each child (at $5500 per child per year for public school, a family with three children would shell out $16,500 a year, PLUS school bus fare and non subsidized breakfast and lunch) within a month everyone would be demanding a return to paying reasonable taxes rather than pay-for-service.
Mr. Territo, Catholic, private and charter schools simply EXPEL the disreputable students you describe as coming from public schools. When expelled they become public school students. And they rise or fall as circumstance allows, not because public schools aren’t producing excellent students. What a shame you haven’t had the pleasure of knowing the many fine students I have.
It is oddly fitting that this blog post comes under the banner “Graft, Lies, and Politics” because this is purely a misrepresentation of the facts and purely political spin.
The blog should be titled, “How to mislead the public with deceitful sensationalized headlines.”
This article does not point out that Catholic Schools are more likely to serve low income students than other private schools. The Catholic Church does not make a profit on vouchers or use voucher funds for anything other than the education services they provide. The author has been made aware of these facts but chooses to ignore them.
The author wants to distribute propaganda to defund vouchers and educational choice.
The reader may want to consider the author’s motive for deception.
The article does not point out that Catholic Schools are (allegedly) more likely to serve low income students than other private schools because there are no data available on which to base that conclusion.
James why do you continue to use the misleading headline stating the vouchers are funding the “Catholic Church” when a journalist and I have both informed you that is not the case?
Why are we skirting around the fact public schools were abandoned by people who thought they could buy a better education elsewhere? When public educational equality became the law of the land public education was rocked by past practices for several years because so many people, including those who really couldn’t afford private school tuition, jumped to private schools.
Children unprepared by poor public schools were immediately put into better public schools where they started off behind, often by 2 or more years. All students paid for the fact it was not possible to immediately provide the same level of education to everybody because it was necessary to try to play catch up for past separate, but (un)equal public education for black students while attempting to maintain the level of education previously provided in predominately white schools – an impossible task. This was not a smooth, deliberative transition. It was a virtually overnight thing and expectations for success were unrealistic, at best.
Private schools sprang up like weeds and white students flocked to them and to existing parochial and other private schools to the extent the schools had the capacity to take them. While most of these schools attempted to provide an adequate education, the public schools languished and the startups almost always suffered from inadequate foundations and resources to provide the level of education previously provided by public schools.
Where I now live (and increasingly elsewhere) we have fully integrated schools that work and work well because the white parents did not abandon public schools on a wholesale basis. Everybody is better off as a result.
We all pay for public education and we should all support it. If people have faith-based or other reasons to prefer alternatives, that’s fine, but we should all work for the day when public education is allowed to serve its intended purpose. There is no good reason it should not be the best education available.
Like Tom, I am old enough to remember when public schools were the gold standard in Louisiana education and I was served exceedingly well by my public schools. It is certainly possible to return to that state of affairs. Like everything else, it just requires a collective will to do so – something we seem to lack.
And the millions paid to private and parochial schools in the form of vouchers is just the tip of the scummy iceberg.
Supt. White, with BESE’s blind mice approval has entered into several contracts with non-profit New Schools for Baton Rouge, one of which gave NSBR $1,250,000 of state tax for public education dollars to facilitate the opening of two NONpublic schools which would both take at least 125 voucher students. One of those,Cristo Rey, is a Catholic school of sorts to open in Sept. In Baton Rouge. Cristo Rey has no schools in Louisiana and yet it received LDE approval as a nonpublic school almost two years ago to set it up to take more than the 20% voucher enrollment provided by law – must have been an approved nonpublic school for two years to take more than 20% of enrollment for vouchers. Another legal loophole supposedly makes that legal.
Another example of taxpayer $$ to Catholic schools was the approval of the contracts totaling $350,000 to three Archdiocese (N.O., B.R., and Shreveport) to “expand capacity for voucher recipients.” These were state appropriated dollars in HB 1. I will gladly share those contracts which were attached to a BESE meeting agenda.
When John White tried to convince the legislature that voucher students saved the state money because they cost less than public schools would get for same students he wasn’t even accounting for all the other palms he has greased via voucher dollars.
Thank you for that information geauxteacher. I wish *that* information had gotten some publicity by our…ahem…mainstream media.
My mom taught in Louisiana schools for over 36 years. I’m a product of a Louisiana school-system education. And my kid attends a private, classical school in Bossier Parish. I will choose to pay whatever it costs to send her there until the public system decides to stop indoctrinating kids with liberal theology and common core nonsense. Her school prepares her for life by not only giving her information, but also teaching her how to evaluate that knowledge, think for herself, and debate on facts and not emotion. It also allows to praise and lift up God without persecution. And I’m not really worried about which bathroom they are going to stick her in under the guise of descrimination.
If I was a poor citizen in Orleans Parish, I’d pray for the opportunity to get my kid out of those horrific schools and into a Catholic School where they had a chance to learn, grow, and be someone. We can debate all day long about cyphering money away from the public system. Some of those schools need to wither and die. My ex-wife spent two years in Orleans Parish with teach for America. There is no doubt in my mind that Catholic Schools are a million times better than these disasters of public education.
Soon after Katrina, the Catholic schools in New Orleans were hurting financially because of the number of people who had moved out of the city and the ones who had moved back but could no longer afford private school tuition – probably because they were trying to rebuild their lives and their homes.
The leaders of the Archdiocese came to a BESE meeting and begged BESE to let them provide the primary source of education in the city. In, what they claimed was a totally altruistic offer, they wanted to “help” the families moving back by educating their children.
All BESE had to do was turn over the Orleans parish per pupil funding from the MFP to the Archdiocese, and voila! education problem solved.
There was quite a different BESE at the time – not one almost wholly owned by LABI and the testing and charter-school industry. There was very little debate over the request as the Board was resolute that they could not use MFP funds to pay for private, religious school education. Even the Board’s “private school representative” was completely against it. Plus, it was pretty obvious to everyone that this was a money grab to keep their schools afloat.
Well, the private school industry finally figured out how to use state money to fund their schools into perpetuity – vouchers.
After the economic downturn in 2008-2009, private schools were again hurting financially because families could not afford the tuition. If you’ll remember, the state had to increase the MFP by a large amount in those years to cover the costs of increased enrollment at public schools. The Diocesan systems began closing schools with low enrollment in the new Orleans area and maybe in other areas of the state.
The voucher program, which fit right into Jindal’s agenda, was created to further expand the privatization of education, and it began funneling money to Catholic and other religious schools. Of course, a judge threw a monkey-wrench into their plan to rob public schools of funds to pay for vouchers when he ruled that they could not use MFP funds to pay for the “scholarship program.” (Just as the BESE of old concluded.)
But, they just created another allocation in the budget, which effectively does the same thing.
Now, I have nothing against Catholic schools, and if parents want to pay the tuition to send their kids there instead of public schools, then that is their choice. However, they are not all providing a better education than the student would get at a public school – perhaps a better environment, in some cases, but not a better education.
Same for other religious schools across the state. I have visited many of these independent private, religious schools, and you could not pay me to send my kids to many of those. I found there to be a lack of understanding of educational best practices and pedagogy – especially if the child has any kind of special learning need.
Which is why I think the DOE has been so mysterious about the actual costs and outcomes of the voucher program – if the taxpayers had a real understanding of what they are paying for and the results, I doubt there would be much support – except from the families who are getting free private school tuition.
To Earthmother’s points, families sending 3 children to Catholic schools have not paid $16,500, rather have used vouchers to pay private/parochial school tuition and additionally have been given $15,000 in tax deductions for doing so because Jindal’s minions circumvented LA laws.
To Fairness: Article 1 in the Bill of Rights begins “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…” Those of us who indeed think for ourselves understand that public schools, a part of government, have no business advocating for any religion. You might be surprised at the prayers, Bible study and other Christian religious rituals pushed in public schools. Having taught there awhile I’m not surprised, but I am dismayed.
The Radical Religious Right talking point that Christians are persecuted in public schools is a lie. So is the myth that the Earth was created in 7 days, now presented as alternative “fact” in LA science classroom “supplemental materials” sold by a Family Forum subsidiary which spent hundreds of thousands lobbying for that bill. There’s money in God!