Giving Compass' Take:

· Major discussions have risen around religion in education and school choices. Here, Neal McCluskey discusses religion in education and argues that if tax dollars are used to pay for public schooling, religious Americans should be able to choose the school they would like to attend based on the education they would like to receive.

· How are religious students treated differently in public schools? Why are all citizens required to fund public schooling if the system doesn't treat each student equally? Does the school choice movement promote equity in public education? 

· Interested in reading more about school choice? Learn about the effects of private school choices.

We fight about many things in public schools, from what time the day starts to the saltiness of lunches. But few battles are more painful than ones involving closely-held values, or intensely personal attributes such as race or culture. And among such searing conflicts, none are further beyond resolution within public schooling than religious battles, because the only thing public schools are outright legally prohibited from advancing is religious belief.

How do we end the relegation of religious Americans to legally-mandated second-class citizenship, and defuse many of the most personal conflicts in public schools? School choice: public education, not just public schooling. Let people choose schools without sacrificing their tax dollars to institutions that teach things they deem unacceptable. Indeed, there is a powerful constitutional argument that if government is going to supply secular public schools, it must also supply school choice programs. It is the only way to neither favor nor discriminate against religious Americans.

Ironically, one of the major objections to private school choice programs has been that most private schools are religious. But that is not the problem, either constitutionally or practically. It is a glaring symptom of the problem: We force all people to pay for public schools, but the schools cannot treat all, diverse people equally.

Read the full article about public schooling by Neal McCluskey at the Cato Institute.