vouchers in sheep’s clothing

by Terese Loeb Kreuzer

Voters in California and Michigan this past November had more to consider than their presidential choice. Their ballots included referendums about whether public funds should be released to help children attend non-public schools.

The “V” word – vouchers – appeared on the Michigan ballot. On the California ballot, it didn’t, but the intent was the same, and so were the results of the balloting.

Both voucher initiatives were defeated. A few weeks later, the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati ruled that Cleveland, Ohio’s five-year-old voucher program was unconstitutional.

The Ohio judges observed that the experimental voucher program did not really provide students with a set of options. Few non-religious private schools and no suburban public schools participated in the program. In fact, in 1999-2000, most of the city’s 3,761 voucher students used their $2,500 per pupil stipend to attend parochial schools.

Voucher proponents vow to take this case to the U.S. Supreme Court where they believe they will get a more favorable hearing. They expect that President George W. Bush will have an opportunity to appoint some justices in the next four years, and that this will help their cause.

Those who favor vouchers are an odd coalition of conservatives, the religious right, families of minority children and people who disapprove of government intervention in what they view as areas of personal choice.

With the Republicans in control of the White House and Congress, these voucher enthusiasts will find legislative and executive reinforcement for their point of view, albeit not in the form of vouchers. Proponents are thinking creatively about how to get around voter reluctance to endorse “school choice.” In recent years, 10 statewide voucher initiatives were defeated at the polls. (Florida is the only state with a tax-supported voucher program. A state court ruled it unconstitutional in March 2000, but that verdict is being appealed.)

Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.) thinks that maybe the word “vouchers” is part of the problem. ‘’Maybe the word should be ‘scholarship,’” he said on CNN’s Late Edition.

President Bush doesn’t like the word “vouchers” either, though he does favor giving the families of children in failing public schools $1,500 to use towards any education expense.

Some people think this sounds like George Orwellian double-speak.

As a practical matter, this money could only be used for parochial schools, since most private schools cost many times that amount.

change at the U.S. Dept. of Education
Throughout the country, only 15,000 children are presently attending non-public schools with voucher funding from public sources. Another 50,000 are in private or parochial schools with the help of philanthropic funding.

During nomination hearings, Secretary of Education Roderick R. Paige told the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions that he favored allowing families whose children were in failing schools to have access to taxpayer money. He suggested that they could use it for tutoring or to send children to private or charter schools.

(Charter schools are publicly funded but privately organized with little supervision from the public school system. They can decide how to spend their money and what to teach.)

Dr. Paige’s stance represents a change from that of his predecessor, Richard W. Riley, who was Secretary of Education during the Clinton Administration. Riley was opposed to vouchers, which he said were an effort to “try to solve a public school problem by abandoning public schools.”

Dr. Paige was formerly superintendent of schools in Houston. He is credited with having improved school performance by recruiting quality teachers, reducing violence in schools and tying teacher salaries to reading test results.

But a report published in January 2001 by Johns Hopkins University revealed that fewer than half of the students who entered Houston high schools in the ninth grade stayed on through twelfth grade and graduated.

The bottom line: what worked in Houston may not work on a national scale. Dr. Paige, who is known as a pragmatist, may come to revise his views on public funding of education alternatives.

Among those who oppose this idea are the powerful teachers’ unions and many parents who are happy with their local public schools. To brand all public schools as “bad” and all private schools as “good” is clearly an over-simplification.

As for those public schools with problems, the teachers’ unions point out that they are the ones in need of additional money. Whenever pupils are permitted to withdraw, taking part of their public funding with them, these schools suffer even more.

To brand all public schools as "bad" and all private schools as "good" is clearly an over-simplification.

education tax credits
Meanwhile, the battle is being waged at the state, as well as at the national, level. Arizona has enacted laws making donations to scholarship funds tax-deductible and the New Jersey legislature plans to follow suit. In New York, a proposal has been introduced in the Assembly to give tax credits to families who send their children to private schools.

Education tax credits are President Bush’s latest idea for helping families to leave the public school system. He recently proposed a $5,000 per pupil tax credit for families who send children to non-public schools.

The question remains whether voucher-subsidized students do better in private or parochial schools than they did in public schools. There have been few studies, and certainly none that have been large enough to be conclusive.

Senator Joseph Lieberman (D-Conn.), one of the most prominent Jewish legislators, favors limited voucher programs designed to provide more information about how well they really work. Many in the Orthodox community whose children attend yeshivas instead of public schools, agree with this idea.

However, most Jewish organizations, including Women’s American ORT, are opposed to vouchers and voucher substitutes. The Anti-Defamation League states a position with which many concur: “These programs subvert the constitutional principle of separation of church and state and threaten to undermine our system of public education."

See WAO's Public Policy Resolution on Education.

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