Maddaus interviewed by Press Herald about U.S. Supreme Court decision on Maine’s town tuition program
Associate professor emeritus of education John Maddaus talked to the Portland Press Herald about this week’s U.S. Supreme Court decision striking down Maine’s ban on public, taxpayer funding for tuition at religious schools. Maine has long allowed students in towns with no public high school to put taxpayer money toward the cost of an outside school, public or private. But since 1981, the law has barred students from using those funds at religious schools. The court’s opinion applies to less than a few thousand high school students in Maine, but it could shift the national debate about public funding for religious education. “It’s not really about Maine,” said Maddaus, who researched Maine’s town tuition program in the 1990s. “Yes, it’s a Maine program. But it’s really about this larger national game.”