This is a special Forum Section featuring responses to the U. S. Supreme Court Decision upholding the constitutionality of the Cleveland Ohio School Choice Scholarship Program.

Individuals and Organizations Respond to Supreme Court's Ruling in Support of School Choice:

• George Bush, President of the United States: "This landmark ruling is a victory for parents and children throughout America. ... the Supreme Court has offered the hope of an excellent education to parents and children throughout our country."
  
• Rod Paige, U.S. Secretary of Education: "Giving parents greater choices and kids better chances does not hurt public education. In fact it is my view that it will strengthen it because when public education responds with its best it will be the best." Link to webcast and full transcript of press briefing. See also Secretary Paige's op-ed in the June 28  Washington Post: "[The Court's decision] recasts the education debates in this country, encouraging a new civil rights revolution and ushering in a 'new birth of freedom' for parents and their children everywhere in America."
  
• Lisa Graham Keegan, CEO, Education Leaders Council: "The Supreme Court instinctively understood what opponents of the Cleveland program do not – that education in America is not about particular systems or structures, but students. True educational choice puts the system to work for students, rather than students at the mercy of the system."
  
• Former Secretary of Education William Bennett, co-director of Empower America: "The decision could not have come at a better time.... Most of [Cleveland's] failing 67 percent of children who do not graduate are poor and minority students. They are trapped in a system that continually fails them. The choice program there, begun in 1995, has helped thousands of students to break the bonds of failing schools."
  
• Libby Sternberg, Executive Director, Vermonters for Better Education:  "While our happiness for Cleveland's children is boundless, it is tempered by the fact that Vermonters will not be able to access vouchers to religious schools because of our state Supreme Court's extremely narrow - and we believe faulty - interpretation of the 'compelled support' clause of the Vermont Constitution."
  
• John McClaughry, President, Ethan Allen Institute: "Government may properly leave it to parents to choose the kind of education that they believe will best help their children grow up into educated, morally strong, and productive citizens of our country, and provide the funds to make those choices effective."
  
• Institute for Justice Press Release: "This was the Super Bowl for school choice and the kids won. This decision makes good on the promise made nearly 50 years ago in Brown v. Board of Education."
  
• The American Legislative Council Press Release: "Today’s landmark ruling is a clarion call to America’s state legislatures. Choice in education is now as much a civil right as voting.”
  
• Floridians for School Choice Press Release: "Florida is leading the nation with school choice programs and the Supreme Court just banished the only meaningful objection to them.... The voucher moms just got the backing of the Founding Fathers."
  
• Black Alliance for Educational Options press release: "This victory is bigger than Cleveland. This is a victory, and a gigantic step, toward giving parents and children a choice--and a chance."
  
• Howard Fuller, Chairman of BAEO Board: "Supreme Court has helped level the playing field... [but] BAEO is under no illusions that the struggle is over. Those who oppose school choice programs are tenacious."
  
• Fritz Steiger, President, Children First America: "The Supreme Court decision clearly shows that a program allowing parents to choose between public, private and religious schools is just as constitutional as the GI Bill, which allows soldiers to choose between public, private and religious universities."
  
• Citizens for Educational Freedom press release: "We finally have a definitive legal statement allowing school voucher programs. There has never been any doubt that they work, but there have been many legal roadblocks. This decision removes most of them."
  
• Evergreen Freedom Foundation press release: "The Supreme Court decision acknowledges that the right of children to get an excellent education trumps the right of education bureaucrats to protect their turf. The adults running the current monopoly system will just have to move over and make room for kids and their parents."
  
• Milton and Rose D. Friedman Foundation press release: "The floodgates are open, and states across the union can introduce voucher programs secure in the knowledge that the U.S. Supreme Court is on their side.”
  
• CATO Institute daily dispatch: "The decision, which upholds the constitutionality of private school scholarships for low-income families, begins to break down the barriers that exist between children and access to high quality schools."
  
• Excellent Education for Everyone press release: "With the support of the Court's decision, our organization is determined to improve public education in New Jersey's urban districts by empowering parents with school choice.... Empowered parents, who may choose to move their children if they are not satisfied with their education, are the catalyst for public school reform."
  
• Commonwealth Foundation press release: “Today, the U.S. Supreme Court issued the Education Emancipation Proclamation and told the National Education Association and the Pennsylvania State Education Association to ‘Let Our Children Go!’”
  
• Heritage Foundation press release: "The victory for choice supporters will have a striking legal, practical, and psychological impact. The likely legal effect of the ruling will be a shift in the type of challenges that are brought, from desperate arguments to despicable ones."
  
• REACH Foundation, Pennsylvania's Grassroots Coalition for School Choice: "It is now incumbent on state legislatures - especially Pennsylvania's -- to enact voucher programs that will allow children to realize their dreams of living productive and fulfilling lives."
  
• North Carolina Education Alliance statement: "Educational freedom is the new civil right, and now the nation's highest court has opened the door for state initiatives to achieve it."
  
• Citizens for a Sound Economy press release: "The battle for equal opportunity, freedom and quality education took a step forward, but the war has not been won. Teachers Unions will continue to apply organized pressure on legislatures and school boards all across America to deny parents the choices they want for their children."
  
• Matt Moore, National Center for Policy Analysis: "With this decision, government bureaucrats can no longer claim constitutional protection when they prevent those with the humblest of means from exercising the same choices most middle and upper-income families make."
  
• Robert Alt, Ashbrook Center for Public Affairs, Ashland University, Ohio: "Today's decision will create a shockwave of activity in legislatures, as parents who have been forced to both fund and send their children to substandard schools demand the newly deemed constitutionally appropriate choice."
  
• The Heartland Institute press release: "This decision is one of several recent developments, among them Florida’s first state-wide voucher plan and Secretary of Education Rod Paige’s advocacy of vouchers, showing the growing momentum for the school choice movement.... Change is coming, and not even teacher unions will be able to block the door much longer."
  
• Mackinac Center for Public Policy's Michigan Education Digest: "This decision is a great victory for the children in our country. It will open the door for more choice programs, allowing parents to choose the best and safest schools for their children." See also commentary by Samuel Walker of the Mackinac Center for Public Policy: "The whole reason there is a Cleveland voucher program is the politically correct intellectual ghetto to which the U.S. government has forced Americans to abandon their children."

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News and Background on the Supreme Court Decision and the Cleveland School Choice Program:

• Statement By Center For Education Reform President Jeanne Allen On Supreme Court Ruling Supporting School Choice For Cleveland Children, June 27, 2002
• Text of U.S. Supreme Court Decision (.pdf format).
• Background and highlights on the Ohio School Choice Program.
• News coverage of the Supreme Court Decision at CER and Education Reform in the News.

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The Education Forum features opinion editorials, essays, commentaries and analyses offered by education activists and experts working at the forefront of education reform. 

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