This article reports on two Mideast-themed schools which have attracted fierce controversy amplified in the news media and the blogosphere. A new public school with a focus on Arabic language and culture is set to open in New York City this week, after being assailed for months by opponents who claim it will be a taxpayer-funded Islamic school…

Florida's voucher program for students in the lowest-rated public schools is unconstitutional, the state supreme court ruled early January 2006 in a 5-2 decision that friends and foes of private school choice are scrutinizing for its potential impact on voucher debates nationwide. Chief Justice Barbara J. Pariente of the Florida Supreme Court…

This article reports on the fiery California atheist who lost his bid at the U.S. Supreme Court to get "under God" stricken from the Pledge of Allegiance. Dr. Michael A. Newdow, an emergency-room physician with a law degree who represented himself before the Supreme Court in the high-profile case against the Elk Grove, California, school…

Pledging allegiance to the flag--and the "one nation under God" it is said to represent--has been second nature to generations of American schoolchildren. Yet few have had as much reason to reflect on the practice as those in Sacramento, California. Since March 2000, California's Elk Grove school district has faced a legal challenge to…

Florida's Opportunity Scholarships faced their most crucial test in June 2005, as the state supreme court heard arguments in a case about the constitutionality of the voucher program. In more than an hour of oral arguments in "Bush v. Holmes," held June 7, in Tallahassee and shown live on the Internet, lawyers sparred over the…