Unexpected voices join the battle to improve the quality of education

By Jeff Jacoby

THE STORIED Anti-Defamation League, one of the nation’s oldest civil rights organizations, is fervent about the separation of church and state. It devotes an elaborate page to the subject on its website. It files friend-of-the-court briefs when church/state issues come before the federal or state judiciary. Whether the controversy is over school prayer, religious displays in public, or the phrase “under God’’ in the Pledge of Allegiance, ADL argues with much passion for keeping the “wall of separation’’ between government and religion as high and impenetrable as possible. “The more government and religion become entangled,’’ it has often warned, “the more threatening the environment becomes for each.’’

No surprise, then, that ADL takes a hard line against school-choice voucher programs, which give parents the wherewithal to rescue their children from failing public schools and enroll them in private schools instead. Since those private schools are often church-affiliated, ADL contended in an amicus brief the last time the Supreme Court took up the issue, vouchers have the unconstitutional effect of directing “government funding to religious schools for religious purposes.’’

That case was Zelman v. Simmons-Harris, a landmark decided in 2002 in which the Supreme Court disagreed with ADL. As long as vouchers enable parents to “exercise genuine choice among options public and private, secular and religious,’’ the majority ruled, nothing about them offends the Constitution.

But ADL’s opposition hasn’t softened. In a five-part essay posted online, it claims that “vouchers pose a serious threat to values that are vital to the health of American democracy’’ and “threaten to undermine our system of public education.’’

Needless to say, the ADL position, widely shared on the left, has plenty of critics on the right, including your humble servant. From the conservative editorialists at the Wall Street Journal to the libertarian litigators at the Institute for Justice, supporters of vouchers have excoriated those who oppose them ­ especially teachers unions and the politicians who genuflect to them ­ for their willingness to keep poor kids trapped in wretched schools.

But while there may be nothing extraordinary about conservatives or libertarians embracing school choice, it takes real grit for liberals or Democrats to do so. Especially when they do so from within ADL

http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2010/05/16/liberal_grit_in_the_fight_for_school_choice/