Should public funds be used to support nonpublic education? Controversy over that question has raged since the early 19th century. In the 1990s this debate centers on elementary and secondary school tuition vouchers, sometimes called "scholarships," which feature numerous plans with varying levels of aid, but they all involve public funds being spent for nonpublic education.
Voucher advocates claim that it's only fair to include nonpublic schooling in public funding for elementary and secondary education, that vouchers will promote diversity, and that school "choice" will improve the quality and effectiveness of education. But are these claims true?
The Case Against School Vouchers helps lawmakers, opinion leaders, and the public understand that voucher proposals threaten religious freedom, an already overburdened economy, the democratic structure of American education, community interfaith harmony, and the core of American values.

This outstanding collection of memorable quotations on religious freedom - the most comprehensive ever assembled - covers many centuries of thought and a wide array of sources. On every page, the reader will discover a wealth of thoughtful, wise, and impassioned statements by all manner of men and women on a subject that has moved the consciences of generations from the distant past to the present. Included are early church fathers, Enlightenment philosophers, popes, anticlerical European statesmen, journalists, famous writers, judges, twenty-six presidents of the United States, and many others. A special feature of this compilation is the inclusion of quotes from major judicial decisions, from 1872 to the present, that bear on religious liberty. Above all, these quotations show that an enormously wide spectrum of men and women of diverse religious, social, and political views have championed the principle of religious freedom. Covering an extraordinary array of topics - from abortion rights, charitable choice, and creationism to pluralism, religious persecution, and school prayer - teachers, scholars, clergy, legislators, writers, public speakers, and anyone with an interest in these and other vital issues will benefit from the powerful words in this volume.

In 1787, the new United States of America formulated a Constitution, which for more than two hundred years has remained the greatest single advance in the long evolution of democracy and freedom. The authors of the Constitution, fearing the religious intolerance and persecution that was typical of many European governments, deliberately avoided a church-state union and limited the federal government to purely secular matters. The First Amendment explicitly stated, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; ..". In the debate over the separation between church and state, attention is often focussed solely on the national Constitution. The fact is sometimes overlooked that the state constitutions, some of which were written before the federal Constitution, include explicit protections of religious liberty and church-state separation, some even more comprehensive and specific in their guarantees and prohibitions than the U.S. Constitution. All of the state constitutions deal with religious freedom and all support the church-state separation principle. Forty-six states explicitly protect freedom of worship or conscience, while thirty-five states prohibit establishment of any state religion. Interestingly, five states still have provisions requiring that office holders believe in a Supreme Being, despite the fact that the Supreme Court declared these requirements to be unconstitutional in 1961. This comprehensive volume brings together all of the religious-liberty and church-state provisions of the fifty state constitutions. The only work of its kind, Religious Liberty and State Constitutions will serve as a useful referencework for people in the fields of education, law, and religion.

This work includes a state-by-state survey of direct or indirect aid for parochial and other non-public schools, and discusses the controversy in American education on church and state.