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Preparatory Work Required

Changes to the legal system must be made before the need for an additional law school or the quality of legal education can be analyzed.

The demand for new law schools is driven by the tremendous profits they generate. In addition, with lawyers among the alumni, favors for the school are easier to obtain.

A legal system that serves the public must have undergraduate pre-law requirements with heavy emphasis on ethics. Legal education must be brought to focus on public service rather than legal system maintenance.

Howard Zinn’s “Peoples History of the United States” provides background information. The system must eliminate abuse of minorities, sales of pardons, rigged elections, and unprovoked wars. The focus must be on prevention of problems – reduce the drug consumption, divorce and crime rates; provide subsidized housing and medical treatment for the elderly. The elimination of government waste could provide the funds for these endeavors.

The Telecommunications Act of 1996 must be repealed to return competition to journalism and payment for elections by a tax assessed equally against all Americans to stop politicians from pandering for money must be in place before the question of how many law schools are necessary can be answered.

William Sumner Scott, J.D.
Judicial Equality Foundation, Inc.

The right question is not do we need more lawyers but will society gain by having more people with legal training? All law school graduates do not practice law as many go into other areas where they seem to find their legal training very valuable.

From the Inside Higher Education website:

Do We Need More Lawyers?

Does California – or the country for that matter – need a new law school? Officials at the University of California at Irvine believe it does and are moving ahead with plans to create another law school even though the state agency charged with studying such issues is unconvinced of the need.

The University of California Board of Regents has signed off on the law school which will cost $70 million to build and is expected to open in 2009.

Irvine’s law school proposal was sent to the California Postsecondary Education Commission, an advisory group to the Legislature and the governor on higher education, in September. After learning that the commission would recommend against the law school, the university withdrew the proposal to provide more information. After reviewing the revisions, the commission “still is unable to make a recommendation,” said Murray Haberman, executive director. While Irvine is moving ahead, the commission’s reaction has renewed criticism of the project.

Dan Walters, a columnist writing for The Sacramento Bee, wrote in an op-ed called “law school plan smells like pork” that studies have demonstrated that California has about “a 90 percent oversupply of lawyers already.”

“California doesn’t need another law school that would be built at least partially with voter-approved bond funds and whose operations would be at least partially underwritten by taxpayers,” he said.

One area in which Irvine failed to meet commission criteria for new programs was proof of demand. The American Bar Association accredits 19 law schools in California.

But the commission’s objections may not carry the day. “We don’t have final approval authority,” said Haberman. “However, it would be the first time if they moved forward with a new program without receiving the commission’s recommendation for concurrence.”

Velma Montoya, a former University of California regent, wrote in a column on the debate: “If there were a current California lawyer shortage, why aren’t California’s market-driven independent law schools expanding.” She added that if a fifth California public law school is created, it would need hundreds of millions of dollars of taxpayer funds to build and operate for even a short period of time.

Irvine officials maintain that their law school will be different because of a focus on training public interest lawyers. The law school aims to train students, its material say, “to think more deeply and critically about a number of complex social issues regarding equal opportunity, racial and national identity, minority rights, civil and individual rights and social justice.”

— Sarah Rosser

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How is Formal Education to Be Delivered

The interest spurred by Science is truly a reflection of resistance to access to good teaching by computer and other modern methods.

The denial of admission and flunk were the historical methods of the elite to maintain their societal position. The methods described in this article are about to end the hammer lock the elites have held on formal education.

With the computer and student aids, rather than 25,000 applicants for 1,000 slots, all 25,000 can be admitted and taught. Doors will open on merit rather than name.

Michael Milken went into education because he predicts a move to efficient, modern, profitable methods. The question is who and how will they be delivered. NCAT is on the leading edge because of the grant from Pew. Grants from Carnegie, Ford and others should soon put competitors into this effort.

Let’s first improve the poorest educated yet most important and most profitable to educate among us, the lawyers.

Behave as though we want to take formal education to the final four.

William Sumner Scott, J.D.
Judicial Equality Foundation, Inc.

From the Inside Higher Education website:

Introductory Course Makeovers

Intermediate algebra at the University of Alabama used to be your basic introductory class — lecture format, little interaction.

When Joe Benson, senior associate dean in the College of Arts and Sciences, looked at the grade distribution in the Math 100 course in 1999, he was displeased. Fewer than 40 percent of the 1,500 students who enrolled during that academic year received a C- or higher, and many were unable to move onto the next course in the math sequence.

“It was a situation where students, particularly at that level, had a difficult time learning the math in that format,” Benson said. “Their engagement in the course wasn’t as high as we would have liked.”

By fall 2004, the grade distribution was markedly different. Seventy-five percent of students received either A, B or C grades in the course.

What gave?

Early in 2000, Alabama was selected to take part in a course redesign project set up through the National Center for Academic Transformation. The nonprofit organization consults with colleges across the country on how they can improve student academic performance while reducing costs. It advocates more use of technology in large-enrollment, introductory courses, and in some cases replaces lectures with lab time that allow for more individual interaction between professors and students.

With an $8.8 million grant from the Pew Charitable Trusts, the center provided grants to 30 two- and four-year institutions to take part in its program in course redesign from 1999 to 2004. NCAT reported that student learning, measured through tests before and after, improved at 25 of the institutions and remained equal at the other five. All colleges involved reported cost savings — money that goes back into a department’s general fund, according to the center.

The center is now on its third round of grants. Money is being distributed to roughly 60 institutions for course redesign projects. And several large university systems — including the Arizona Board of Regents, the State University of New York System and the University System of Maryland — have signed on to participate through at least 2009.

NCAT’s growth in visibility can be attributed to a confluence of factors. As some of the early grantees have reported results from their redesign projects, word of mouth has spread at meetings of both trustees and faculty.

At the same time, the center’s core mission of helping higher education produce more degree holders while becoming cost efficient has been affirmed by the Secretary of Education’s Commission on the Future of Higher Education. A report released by the Making Opportunity Available project last week also cited NCAT’s efforts.

A Menu of Models

NCAT has identified several redesign models, all of which adhere to the principle that students need more than just traditional lectures. One model reduces the number of in-class meetings and increases lab time. Some simply supplement lectures with out-of-class activities — CD-Rom assignments, online simulations and interactive workshops.

The models stress online assessment that provides immediate feedback to instructors. Administrators can monitor tests given to students before the course redesign and after to measure their subject knowledge.

The idea, says Carol A. Twigg, president and chief executive of NCAT, is to structure courses so that both student and instructor time is best used. Face-to-face time with students is valuable, but sometimes independent learning is more sensible, the NCAT theory goes. Twigg, a former academic administrator and vice president of Educom (the higher education technology association now know as Educause), said the models are meant to give colleges flexibility.

Alabama used NCAT’s “emporium” model, which eliminates all class meetings and replaces them with a learning resource center featuring online material and on-demand faculty assistance.

Colleges typically begin with a pilot project and then bring changes to a class over a three-year period. Alabama began its pilot program in spring of 2000, abandoning the traditional three-times-a-week blackboard instruction that accommodated sections of 35 students in favor of a new software program and one-on-one tutorial assistance. The university created a math technology learning center dedicated exclusively to students in the course.

Students work through online math problems, largely going at their own pace and seeking help from an on-site instructor whenever they come across questions. There is generally one required lab time per week.

While some students and parents were initially skeptical, Benson said test scores gradually rose. He was so pleased with the results that Alabama signed on to use NCAT to help with other math courses.

“Math courses are particularly amenable to computer-based instruction,” Benson said. “If you walk by a lab and look at the classes, at any point there are people sitting there doing math. If you walk past most college classes, they are sitting there watching an instructor doing a problem. It doesn’t translate.”

The NCAT Web site lists a number of cost-reduction strategies for colleges that are participating in a redesign: Reduce the number of sections of a course, increase the size of each section, bring in several adjuncts to teach sections of a course that were previously taught by full-time instructors.

Some who read the redesign proposals wonder about staffing implications: Would a college choose to cut faculty jobs as a result of structural changes to a course?

Twigg says none of the models call for eliminating instructor positions, and that replacing faculty with graduate instructors or part-timers is not a predominant technique.

“People naturally think, if you talk about saving money, you’re going to lose jobs,” she said. “We’re talking about changing the way in which faculty work to free them to do other things.”

But Roy Fechner, a math instructor at Alabama, said since several courses have gone to the new model, he is asked to teach fewer sections, which means less income. Other instructors have also reported a workload decrease, he said.

Fechner listed other problems with the redesigned courses. It’s more difficult to check if students are using the correct method to solve problems because process is hard to track with the software. Because instructors now see students once a week in lab instead of three times in lecture, they are asked to disseminate more information in one sitting than many students can digest, he said. And class size has doubled, from 30 to 60 in some cases, making it difficult to tell if students are prepared, Fechner added.

Colleges have reported problems while implementing the course changes. According to the NCAT Web site, in some cases early on, faculty and parents were upset that courses would require less class time and face-to-face interaction. It said students at some institutions were concerned about lack of faculty availability in learning centers. Some teaching assistants weren’t prepared to handle the online technology, and faculty members said teaching in lab setting took adjustments.

Sam Evers, an instructor at the University of Alabama who has taught in the math department for more than a decade, said the redesign has changed the way faculty there look at math courses.

“The human element isn’t gone; if anything it’s more hands-on now,” he said. “Before, if students wanted to ask me a question, they’d have to e-mail me with a question or set up a time during my office hours. Now, they may not get me specifically, but someone will be on site immediately.”

Evers said most of the concern has been from instructors, (introductory math courses aren’t taught by full-time professors) but that most now understand the change simply means a shift in routine, with more time now spent walking the floor of the lab. “You need as many or more instructors to make this work right,” he said.

And then there’s the question of cost savings. NCAT stresses that reshaped courses save institutions money by freeing up faculty time and reducing per-student costs.

Stephen C. Ehrmann, vice president of the nonprofit Teaching, Learning and Technology Group, says that while projects that the center highlights report lower operating costs, the newly designed courses tend to be more capital intensive.

Ehrmann said there is a “loose relationship” between money spent to redesign a course and the educational outcome — in other words, a costly course can be less effective than one that is less expensive to reshape. Models that emphasize materials as a substitute for what he calls “live transmission or interaction” tend to be more rigid, he said.

“It’s harder to adapt to the teaching preferences of faculty A and faculty B, or to changing current events that might affect a course,” he said.

Ehrmann said NCAT’s model also focuses too heavily on redesigning individual courses rather than a sequence or cluster.

Working with State Systems

Large state university systems, many of which are seeing rapid enrollment increases, are signing on to work with Twigg.

This spring, the State University of New York is expected to begin work with NCAT to reshape at least 10 courses systemwide.

The University of Maryland System hired Twigg as a consultant for the next three years to work with 11 colleges. The project coordinators, Donald Spicer and Nancy Shapiro, both associate vice chancellors, said the project will focus on courses that serve as transitions from high school to college work.

“Students who are struggling can get the help they need, and those ready to launch ahead aren’t held back,” Shapiro said of the new course models.

Maryland wants to accommodate more students and add sections. Spicer said some courses are growing in size without the physical space or enough instructors. Twigg is providing feedback to faculty there who are submitting proposals.

Both Shapiro and Spicer said they will measure success by cost savings, dropout rates and major declarations (how many students participating in the pilot courses end up declaring a major in the field where the project took place.)

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is using a grant to rethink how to structure Spanish courses. Half the sections of an introductory class are moving from four hours of classroom time per week (plus office hours) to a setup that is weighted more heavily toward independent work online and virtual office hours, during which time a faculty member will be available online.

Glynis Cowell, director of the UNC Spanish language program, said the change could help accommodate more students. The university — because of lack of physical space and budget constraints — hasn’t been able to meet its student demand in Spanish. She said students will also be able to move at their own pace.

Larry King, a UNC Spanish professor, said those who support the changes say technology provides more flexibility in instruction, gives immediate feedback and allows students to hear authentic language on demand. Critics say it’s not sensible to replace face time with an instructor and that cultural context is impossible to pick up over a video.

NCAT has also finished consulting with the Ohio Learning Network. Ohio University was one of the institutions that participated in an orientation that explained the model system. (NCAT didn’t follow the progress of a course redesign there.)

Scott Titsworth, associate director for graduate studies in the School of Communication Studies, said changes to an introductory-level communications course has greatly reduced grading time. He said for every hour of class instruction, the professor and two teaching assistants spent four hours grading reflection papers in the 400-person course.

Students now respond to homework assignments in class by answering questions using a clicker system. Titsworth says those responses help spark class discussion. Class attendance is up and there is only a need for one teaching assistant, he said.

Maryn Boess, grants program manager with the Arizona Board of Regents — which began working with Twigg in January — said she hopes to support 10 to 15 projects overall at the University of Arizona, Northern Arizona University and Arizona State University.

“Faculty may not even be aware of the level of discontent with a large lecture course,” she said. “Some are still wedded to the large lecture model and haven’t become aware of how different it can be. We’re riding the coattails of this movement.”

— Elia Powers

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Topic Merits Discussion

Once the topic is selected, those with views can attempt to convince others of their position. No group is better qualified to take on that challenge than the American Historical Association. Our hope is that they do more than merely vote, but also publish reasons for their positions.

From our view, the word Democracy was abused by the United States administration.

That word requires separation of church from state and safety to all people regardless of race, color, sex or creed.

These attributes are not present in the governments installed by the United States in Afghanistan and Iraq. As a consequence, Americans are less safe today than they were before the wars our government initiated.

History should be fact first, interpretation later. Howard Zinn’s work “A People’s History of the United States” should be the model for the presentation of all historical events. The foreign policy, much less the wars, initiated by the United States over the past 30 years will not stand that scrutiny.

William Sumner Scott, J.D.
Judicial Equality Foundation, Inc.

From the Inside Higher Education website:

Historians Vote to Condemn War in Iraq

Members of the American Historical Association — who in an earlier generation engaged in warfare among themselves over what stand to take on Vietnam — have overwhelmingly voted to condemn the war in Iraq and to seek its “speedy conclusion.”

The vote — announced Monday — ends a highly unusual process in which the anti-war resolution was considered. It was first passed by members who attended the association’s business meeting during the annual convention in January, in Atlanta. But in a move unprecedented in recent history, the AHA’s governing council decided that the measure had such “intrinsic importance” that it should be considered by all members. So an online discussion was sponsored in February and voting concluded last week.

Members voted 1,550 (76 percent) to 498 (24 percent) for the resolution. Those voting represented about 15 percent of the group’s membership — far more than the approximately 100 who were at the business meeting in January. The debate over the resolution has been controversial not so much because historians are backing the war, but because some of them believe that it is not in the best interests of the association to take a stand on this issue.

The measure itself — the Resolution on United States Government Practices Inimical to the Values of the Historical Profession — relates the war in Iraq to key issues of importance to scholars. For instance, it notes that there have been cases of foreign scholars being excluded from the United States because of heightened security measures, and that authorities have reclassified previously unclassified documents. Other parts of the resolution are more related to broad moral criticisms of the war, saying that historians object to “using interrogation techniques at Guantanamo, Abu-Ghraib, Bagram, and other locations incompatible with respect for the dignity of all persons required by a civilized society.”

The resolution concludes by urging all members of the group to “take a public stand as citizens on behalf of the values necessary to the practice of our profession” and to “do whatever they can to bring the Iraq war to a speedy conclusion.”

A group called Historians Against the War campaigned for the resolution, saying it was important for scholars to take a moral stance. A joint letter released by a number of supporters of the resolution said that it was designed to encourage “conscientious scholarship.” The letter added that “we prefer not to be remembered by posterity as ‘good Americans’ who accepted grievous wrongs, but rather as citizen-scholars who took a public stand to oppose the misdeeds of the powerful when they directly assaulted the ethical standards of our profession.”

David R. Applebaum, a professor of history at Rowan University and one of the organizers of the effort, said via e-mail Monday that he was “elated” by the outcome of the vote. “It will help us translate thought into action,” he said. “In the long run, I think it will encourage young people to enter a vibrant, vital and engaged profession that has an important part to play in the building of a more democratic society.”

One of those who spoke against the resolution in Atlanta was James Sheehan, a past president of the association, a professor at Stanford University, and a critic of the war. In Atlanta, he advocated that historians — as individuals — do whatever they could against the war. In an interview Monday, he said that the association did the right thing by having a broader vote on the resolution and that he was disappointed, but not surprised by the outcome.

He said that there are two problems with the resolution. First, he said, “it seems to me that people join the AHA with certain expectations, and the fact that the association will take political positions is not one of them. In a way, you are violating the conditions of membership, and I suspect a few people will leave.”

Second, he said it was important for the association to take political stands on issues “narrowly concerned with the interests of scholars in general and historians in particular.” So he said it was important for the AHA to speak out as it does against visa denials to foreign scholars or restrictions on access to presidential records. “But by taking more general stands, we weaken our moral authority and we become identified with partisan positions,” he said. “There is only a certain amount of moral capital that we have.”

— Scott Jaschik

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We Need More Articles Like This One

The comment by Mr. Washington discloses that there is some lucid thought left in America.

Money + alcohol and other drug consumption = no moral conduct.

Power + Organized Religion = absolute right to act.

Combine them and the general public does not have a chance. That is where Yale and other educational institutions come into play. They can move to become part of the solution.

They must lead the way to separate the components.

William Sumner Scott, J.D.
Judicial Equality Foundation, Inc.

From the Inside Higher Education website:

Unusual Mix of Prayer and Politics

Yale Divinity School students burned a copy of the Bill of Rights and the Ten Commandments at a recent Ash Wednesday service before marking their foreheads with the ashes – not as protest, they say, but to repent for their own complicity in “the ongoing injustice being perpetuated by our nation.”

“Ash Wednesday is the beginning of Lent where we remember our sins and the ways that we are complicit in evil in our society. As an American, the way that’s most clear today is through the War on Terror and the war on Iraq,” said Christopher Doucot, a first-year master’s student who came up with the idea for the service. About 40 to 45 students, faculty, administrators and local residentsattended the service, intended to provide an opportunity for reflection on such topics as secret prisons, “indiscriminate bombings,” domestic spying and torture.

“We were reminding ourselves of our own complicity,” said Doucot. “We’re not pointing fingers at anyone but ourselves.”

A Tuesday Yale Daily News account of the unusual Ash Wednesday service indicated that the ritual burning has “sparked concern among the school’s alumni and some students.” But while it’s obvious that in a country that periodically debates banning flag-burning, such an approach to melding politics and prayer might not prove popular, Doucot said that he has not heard from anyone who was offended, “not a soul.” Rev. Dale Peterson, associate dean of students at Yale Divinity School, said that if there was any controversy, he wasn’t aware of it. It was just a small service, said Reverend Peterson, who was among the attendees, held on a day that at least two much larger services were occurring on campus.

Doucot did acknowledge however that organizers were hoping the action would draw attention to their concerns. “You don’t do things to be provocative,” he said of the service. “But one of the fears I have is being ignored.”

“I absolutely hope people have a visceral reaction … if they have that strong of a reaction to how a symbol is treated, how it’s burned, then there’s hope that upon reflection, they will have as strong of a visceral reaction to that symbol being violated in practice, which is what searches without warrants do, which is what torture does.”

The service was conducted quietly, without signs or fanfare. Participants stood in a circle and read each commandment or constitutional amendment aloud. Each text was then burned, one by one.

“As the organizers of the service, we believe that the rights and responsibilities held up in those two documents have already been violated by this government, as well as by ourselves as citizens and Christians,” said Tamara Shantz, a third-year divinity student, via e-mail. “The burning was then symbolic of what has already been accomplished, not as a symbol of our lack of respect for the values upheld in the Bill of Rights and the 10 Commandments.”

“It wasn’t burning these documents as if they were not of importance,” explained Reverend Peterson. “It was the exact opposite. We were putting them on our foreheads, after asking God’s forgiveness for not living up to the ideals of them.”

But while Jessica Anschutz, a third-year divinity student who also helped organize the service, said that the first she heard of any controversy was from The Yale Daily News reporter, Tuesday’s article has succeeded in raising the profile of the small service.And not all Yalies, it turns out, are comfortable with the premise behind this particular approach to prayer.

“[Ash Wednesday] is a fully spiritual event; it’s not political in any sense. To pervert it like that is really inappropriate especially at a place like a divinity school,” said Stephen Schmalhofer, a Yale junior and author of the blog, ” For God, For Country and For Yale.“

“It seems that to put this in a political context completely removes this from the Christian tradition of the event, which is something that too often happens at the Yale Divinity School … they have the tendency to manipulate these traditions for political statements, to really rip these traditional devotions from the Christian community in which they were conceived,” Schmalhofer said.

Jonathan Serrato, a sophomore at Yale and the student outreach chair for the St. Thomas More Undergraduate Council, said that while he believes the organizers of the Ash Wednesday service had good intentions and were trying to make a good point, their approach was inappropriate.

“I do believe that there is a call for Christians of all denominations to ‘wake up’ and realize that we must live our faith and do everything in our power to correct what we see as wrong in society, even if the most we can do is try,” Serrato said in an e-mail. “However, I don’t feel that this event was appropriate for the time or the message that they were trying to convey. For me, Lent is a time of personal cleansing and preparation for life after death. Also for me, the ashes given on Ash Wednesday are sacred and come from the blessed palms from the previous year’s Palm Sunday, and I feel that this event could be considered unintentionally disrespectful.”

“It does seem like this is the kind of thing that you have to do very, very delicately, but it appears that this is something they did do delicately,” said William “Beau” Weston, a professor of sociology at Centre College in Kentucky and a Yale Divinity School alumnus.

“It’s actually a pretty classy act. It does raise one’s alarm to have students burning anything, but there are circumstances in which that’s an appropriate thing to do. Ash Wednesday names the context,” said Weston.

“The tradition of using worship as a time to engage the hearts of the people and engage in dramatic action is a rich one,” added Bill McKinney, president of the Pacific School of Religion, a Berkeley seminary, and a professor of American religion. “If you think of liturgy as the work of the people, which is its original meaning, then for the people to express ritually their most powerful hurts and pains and needs, for those who feel that our country’s on the wrong track, it’s very much consistent with the way worship works.”

— Elizabeth Redden

Following is the Foundation’s reaction to the California decision to allow the state government to issue bonds to finance the construction of buildings at religious schools. The complete decision is here.

Childhood Indoctrination to Blame

Lawyers receive no legal education on organized religions relationship with the First Amendment.

This vacuum is filled with the prejudices provided to them by their parents from childhood.

As a result, do not expect the Courts to get religious related decisions right before formal education catches up with the free pass religion is given to teach that the books they print are the word of God without proof there is a God much less that the books have any value other than as recorded history and opinion.

William Sumner Scott, J.D.
Judicial Equality Foundation, Inc.

From the Inside Higher Education website:

Big Win for Religious Colleges

In a major win for religious colleges, the California Supreme Court on Monday ruled, 4-3, that even “pervasively sectarian” institutions can have bonds issued by government agencies on their behalf, potentially saving them millions of dollars in the costs of construction.

To be eligible, the colleges must offer a broad array of courses and the facilities must be used in ways that are equivalent to the use of facilities at secular institutions. So dormitories, dining halls, and classrooms for not specifically religious courses would be fine, but presumably the funds could not be used for churches or to house academic departments focused on religious instruction.

In the past, colleges that have religious ties, but in which religion does not play a dominant role in the campus ethos have won the right to have bonds issued on their behalf, with the associated tax benefits. But Monday’s ruling goes much further in extending that right to colleges where religion is central to everything on the campus. As a result, the dissent said that the majority had gone too far.

The ruling came in a case involving requests to issue bonds by Azusa Pacific University, California Baptist University, and the Oaks Christian School.

As described by the court’s majority opinion — and consistent with the universities’ descriptions of themselves on their Web sites — the two universities offer a broad range of courses, and take faith seriously. California Baptist expects students to live by “biblically based Christian principles” and to attend church services. Faculty members must be Christians and 51 percent must be Baptists. But only about 5 percent of students major in Christian or ministry studies.

Similarly at Azusa Pacific, only about 7 percent of students major in religious studies, but the institution’s faith is central. All faculty members must be Christians. Students must exhibit “moral character” consistent with religious belief and must complete 120 hours of student ministry assignments.

The institutions want the bonds issues on their behalf for such facilities as dining halls, dormitories, athletic facilities and classroom buildings.

In the ruling, the Supreme Court of California analyzed tests on church-state separation that have been applied under both the California and U.S. constitutions. The majority opinion stressed that separation of church and state did not require “hostility” toward religion, and it applied a series of tests, which the colleges’ bond proposal passed.

The key hurdle for the religious colleges was a test on whether the bonds would — in the majority’s words — “serve the public interest and no more than incidentally benefit religion.” The majority said that the colleges would pass this test provided that they used the funds for facilities that are not religious and nature and that any educational offerings in these buildings be for instruction that is comparable to that at secular institutions.

“The straightforward assessment … is whether the academic content of a religious school’s course in a secular subject such as math, chemistry, or Shakespeare’s writings is typical of that provided in nonreligious schools,” the Supreme Court ruled. The decision went on to say that enforcing this requirement does not require monitoring of what is said in class each day or limit a professor’s freedom of speech.

“When a school establishes, through its course descriptions or otherwise, that the academic content of its secular classes is typical of comparable courses at a public or other nonreligious schools, it is not necessary to scrutinize the school’s say-to-day classroom communications,” the ruling said. “The circumstance that a teacher may, in addition to teaching a course’s religiously neutral content, express an idea or viewpoint that may be characterized as ‘religious’ does not result in a benefit to religion that is more than incidental to the state’s primary purpose of enhancing secular education opportunities for California residents.”

The key, the court said, was to make judgments on the use of the facilities, and not the broad religious goals or identity of a college. Citing previous rulings by their court, the justices noted that fire and police departments provide the same protection for religious institutions as for secular institutions, so there is no automatic ban on government assistance to even the most religious of institutions.

Lawyers involved in the case told California newspapers that they thought the colleges involved — and most religious colleges — would have no difficulty meeting the tests set by the court.

The three judges who dissented said that the majority paid too little attention to the benefits of a government-issued bond to the colleges. By saving money on facilities, even if those are facilities for secular purposes, the colleges gain additional funds to advance their religious missions, the dissent said.

In that context, the dissent said, it was relevant just how significantly religion pervades campus rules and programs.

“Given the trial court’s uncontested findings that the schools are ‘organized primarily or exclusively for religious purposes,’ “restrict admission of students by religious criteria,’ ‘discriminate on the basis of religion in hiring faculty,’ and ‘integrate religion … into classroom instruction,’ the proposed bond agreements clearly violate” the state Constitution’s separation of church and state, the dissent said.

The Constitution, the dissent said, “simply does not permit a public entity to act as a fundraiser for schools of this nature.”

— Scott Jaschik