According to Sagan (and many others since his passing), the constitutional requirements that all religions be regarded equally is a perfectly appropriate social policy, but the continued deference to religious beliefs (in general) over strictly rational beliefs as an educational policy directly undermines the specific goal of teaching students to think logically and scientifically. In their view, the numerous recent attempts by various states to circumvent constitutional prohibitions against teaching religious values in schools only demonstrates how susceptible educational policy goals and objectives are to extraneous influence from inappropriate sources (Feldman, 2005; Mooney, 2005). Admittedly, identifying the optimal educational policy goals and objectives (at least outside of the most general ones) is a tremendously complex proposition. That is largely because it encompasses so many different variables and their respective interrelation. However, in the broadest sense, at least the first step toward establishing the most beneficial possible educational policy goals and objectives is more a matter of eliminating the policy influences that are...

In some respects, it might be helpful in that regard to conceptualize the best imaginable educational policy goals and objectives from a "blank-slate" starting point as a means of identifying where contemporary policy-making trends fall short of the ideal.
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Darling-Hammond, L. "NCLB Implementation Challenges: The Local Superintendent's

View" Peabody Journal of Education, Vol. 80; (2004): 156-169.

Davidson, K. (1999). Carl Sagan: A Life. New York: Wiley & Sons.

Feldman, N. (2005). Divided by God: America's Church and State Problem and What

We Should Do about It. New York: Farrar, Straus, & Giroux.

Mooney, C. (2005). The Republican War on Science. New York: Basic Books.