You make an excellent point that I think roughly half of Americans agree with and want that way, that all schools teach and meet real standards. I'm guessing they/we are mostly of the Democratic party, whereas Republicans would like religion to rule and are fine with no real standards as well as tax-free status, which is like government subsidizing as well. It is completely messed up. We seem to have regressed about a thousand years in the past couple decades... Now as people are getting even dumber we'll surely slip further into back-asswardness, too. I know that's not a word but who cares, right?

There is a lot i=of disagreement about funding religious schools. It used to be that religious schools received no funding at all from the government. However, three then were court rulings which expanded "religious freedoms" where conservative judges ruled that religious schools should be eligible for some funding. Add into that the "Charter schools" most of which are private schools that receive government funding, which came into existence with the claim that they would provide parents with educational choices for their children, but which mostly only let private schools for the rich start to receive money to subsidize education for rich kids, however, the general public has not yet caught on to that yet.

When charter schools were first started, the demand was so great that the charter schools got to pick which students they would take, and they picked the highest achieving students. Thus when test results came out the charter schools initially had higher test scores. However a few years later, because the school were "for profit" they kept making cuts and cutting corners to save money, and most charter schools fell behind average in test scores. Meanwhile the extra high tuition schools for the rich got more money tht was diverted from public schools, which increased their profits and education quality.

Like I said, most people have not caught on yet that charter schools were mostly a big con. It was developed mostly because after years to trying and failing to sell people on school voucher programs, which also tried (but failed) to sell parents on giving parents educational choices for their kids, it was too easy to figure out that the rich were just trying to get tax payers to subsidize education for rich kids. Charter schools was a new twist of the same thing, which they sold by having pilot programs which picked which students would participate, and they only picked high achievers to begin with, which screwed the results, but managed to sell most of the nation on the program.

Anyway, the charter schools opened the door for the government funding private schools with tax payer money, and so the religious schools sued, saying it was religious discrimination to not fund their schools as well, and some conservative judges agreed. So, that is where we are now.

The net result is the further dumbing down of the U.S.

This is the best reason to have the separation in the first place.

The New York Times investigation was excellent and detailed. Like politicians in other parts of the US courting the Evangelicals politicians in New York can get a significant boost from the Hasidim. There are actually several distinct groups of Hasidim, in NYC they make up the majority of the population in some neighborhoods, all prefer to be insulated from the rest of the world. If you want to read the article in the NYT send me a message and I can give you a link, I subscribe to the paper and can give several a month.

No, there can't be, but the Repub theocrats are fully committed to no separation of the two, as long as the state religion is fundamentalist Christianity..

Religious Schools shouldn't get any government funding regardless whether they meet state standards or not.

Merca in real time.

New SCOTUS ruling permits using my tax dollars to fund religious schools. This is a brand new ruling. We are in for bad times with this court in power.

The “red” states are blurring that line of separation. Here in this part of Arizona, to qualify for funding they need only meet a defined curriculum standard. Everyone can choose what school their children attend, and that school gets the “per child” funding allocation. If there were any Hasidic schools here, (doubtful there are; I live in the reddest county in the state), they would have to meet the standard to get the funding. That being said, in the states in which I have experience, there are “church schools” that are funded entirely by tuition and donations. I am not sure whether or how those schools are overseen. My son attended an all boys Catholic high school in Southern California, although he was not a member of any church. He did have to attend religion classes and weekly Mass. We told him to look at it as education ABOUT Catholicism. He was not indoctrinated, although he did come home one day and said, “Mom, I’m going to hell”. I responded, “I’ll see you there”. Our subsequent conversation revealed that a Brother had told him he was going there because he wasn’t Catholic. We laughed about it. He got the best available education in our area and we have no regrets. Because of his 5 advanced placement classes, his grade point average exceeded the “usual” 4.0 highest average and gave him better opportunities for uni. The most memorable quote he came home from school with during the entire four years was when he told me one of his teachers said, “I know you are all having a lot of sex right now, and one of these days you’ll even have a partner…”.