From the Utah History Encyclopedia on-line, we get a solid if brief description of the highlights of public education in Utah.
Here are the roots of the deep opposition to vouchers in Utah. Several times Utah communities started their own private schools, only to turn them over to public entities, especially after 1890. Utahns regard public schools as their own. Voucher advocates seem unable to notice that an assault on the public schools is an assault on Utah communities, for that reason.
Plus, as The Deseret Morning News reported Sunday, Utah’s schools often achieve excellence. Utah parents don’t like the idea of taking money away from successful schools their kids attend to fund untested, unregulated private schools.
Millard Fillmore's Bathtub 
I saw that. Pharyngula covered it, too, here:
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2007/09/watch_out_faculty_biblical_lit.php
And I noted it earlier:
https://timpanogos.wordpress.com/2007/09/22/meanwhile-creationist-oppression-rolls-on/
Pretty bizarre, and pretty disconcerting.
I rather wish I were the attorney representing Bitterman. I think this is a clear breach of contract suit, and the college would have a deucedly difficult time defending it. The First Amendment issues are subsidiary — he had a contract to teach the subject, he taught it, and the school can’t fire people for doing what the school contracted with them to do.
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Not about Utah, but I thought you might be interested in this. I think I found it at onegoodmove. Don’t remember.
http://www.desmoinesregister.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070922/NEWS02/709220333
“A community college instructor in Red Oak claims he was fired after he told his students that the biblical story of Adam and Eve should not be literally interpreted.
Steve Bitterman, 60, said officials at Southwestern Community College sided with a handful of students who threatened legal action over his remarks in a western civilization class Tuesday. He said he was fired Thursday.
“I’m just a little bit shocked myself that a college in good standing would back up students who insist that people who have been through college and have a master’s degree, a couple actually, have to teach that there were such things as talking snakes or lose their job,” Bitterman said.”
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