In this paper, we prove that for  
 $\ell \,=\,1$  or 2 the rate of best  
 $\ell $ - monotone polynomial approximation in the  
 ${{L}_{p}}$  norm  
 $\left( 1\,\le \,p\,\le \,\infty\right)$  weighted by the Jacobi weight  
 ${{w}_{\alpha ,\,\beta }}\left( x \right)\,:=\,{{\left( 1\,+\,x \right)}^{\alpha }}{{\left( 1\,-\,x \right)}^{\beta }}$  with  
 $\alpha ,\,\beta \,>\,-1/p$  if  
 $p\,<\,\infty $ , or  
 $\alpha ,\,\beta \,\ge \,0$  if  
 $p\,=\,\infty $ , is bounded by an appropriate  
 $\left( \ell \,+\,1 \right)$ -st modulus of smoothness with the same weight, and that this rate cannot be bounded by the  
 $\left( \ell \,+\,2 \right)$ -nd modulus. Related results on constrained weighted spline approximation and applications of our estimates are also given.