Good public schools provide the skills and job training we need to attract high-paying jobs. Public education strengthens our community. Good public schools raise the property value of our homes, and strengthen the bonds of community in our towns and cities. Most importantly, public education strengthens our democracy. Our country was founded on the principle of e pluribus unum - out of many, one.
Public education is the mechanism for achieving unity.
Universal public education ensures that all children learn basics of our shared history and our democratic institutions. Furthermore, our schools ought to teach character education and reinforce the lessons of right and wrong that children learn from their parents. As a question of constitutional law, school vouchers have yet to be definitively decided. In the 1973 Nyquist decision, the Supreme Court ruled that the State of New York could not provide tuition vouchers to low-income students at parochial schools. In August 1999, a federal judge issued an injunction against a Cleveland school voucher program that allowed students to pay for private school tuition with taxpayer funds until the courts could determine the constitutionality of the program.