COURT IS RIGHT ON VOUCHERS BUT WRONG ON DRUG TESTS

The three 5-4 decisions handed down by the U.S. Supreme Court Thursday
ranged from the good to the bad to the mixed.
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The court ruled that tuition vouchers are constitutional even if they allow
parents to use them at parochial schools. The ruling upheld a program in
Cleveland that gives mostly poor parents a tuition subsidy of up to $2,250
per child. The city's public schools are regarded as among the worst in the
nation.

The voucher decision was immediately attacked by the public school
establishment, especially teachers unions - the same lobby that savaged
voucher proposals in Pennsylvania. Some of the opposition is hysterical,
with predictions that vouchers would lead to ethnic and religious wars.

In Pennsylvania, the chief beneficiaries of vouchers would be parents whose
children already attend religious schools and who save the other taxpayers
a considerable amount of money in the process. In the inner cities,
however, they perform an even more important function by enabling the
poorest of the poor to escape public schools that are truly wretched.

Critics of vouchers claim they are an improper blending of government and
religion. We have never understood why it would be unconstitutional to help
students with grade school and high school tuition when it is perfectly
legal to give them government grants to attend religious colleges and
universities. Taxpayer-financed assistance for higher education has been
common since the GI Bill was passed after World War II. What is the
difference between Ave Maria Grade School and Carlow College except for the
age of the students?
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It is legal to require good high school kids to take drug tests, just not
the bad ones. That's the force of a decision approving mandatory tests for
students who participate in extracurricular activities.

We never understood that either. The athletes, band members, cheerleaders,
debaters, etc. are generally the best kids in the school. They're too busy
to mess with drugs even if they wanted to. It's the others you have to
worry about.

Why, we wonder, would schools even want to force drug tests on their most
active students? Probably just because they can.
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Candidates for judge apparently can now talk about issues when they
campaign. Up to now, they have been restricted to running on their
education and legal experience, with some meaningless generalities thrown
in ("Tough but Fair!")

This could be a victory for voters who want some idea of where a
prospective judge might go on abortion, labor-management issues, property
rights or anything else. But if they campaign on how they would rule in
particular cases, wouldn't this tear down the American tradition of a
judiciary that is independent of passing political whims?