The Bush Department of Education certainly never meant No Child Left Behind to interfere with the administration’s higher moral calling — but in Virginia, parents are being forced to choose between higher test scores for students and religious education during school hours.  Just as the Bush administration has pushed for increasingly conservative curriculum, such as chastity-only sex education in schools, their stringent testing requirements have become a liberal weapon to combat school-sanctioned religious education.

Virginia permits parents to register their children for religious pull-out education during the school day, as protected by a 53-year-old Supreme Court ruling permitting Weekday Religious Education. According to the Virginia Council of Churches, there were approximately 12,000 students in Virginia participating in this program in 2002, all of whom leave school grounds during the regular day for a half-hour lesson in Christianity. (A similar program exists in 32 other states, mostly Southern). The other kids in the class remain in their classrooms and color.  

As Salon reported this Wednesday, parents have challenged their school boards to modify the WRE program, as taking time away from classroom instruction puts students at a disadvantage when taking No Child Left Behind-mandated state exams.  The school boards have voted to continue the program but find a more creative way to occupy the minority of children not participating in WRE — surely not what the children’s parents intended. “Separate but equal” is no longer an acceptable educational precept when used to divide students along racial lines. Surely it should be as appalling when used to separate first graders on the basis of religious beliefs.

llouison