Vouchers — Panacea or Plague?
The question
of vouchers to students is gaining momentum as parents seek to get their
children out of government schools where they are learning little to
nothing. Recently, the Milwaukee schools
won the right to give vouchers to students from poor schools (although a recent
court decision reversed a prior decision and is now under appeal), taking those
students out of the government schools and placing them in private or parochial
schools, and vouchers are being offered under similar circumstances in
Florida. Other states have toyed
with the idea. What about vouchers? Are they a panacea for the problems of
government schools, or are they a plague for private and parochial schools?
To answer this question, we need to
look at the ideal and the reality of vouchers. This takes us to the First Amendment:
Congress shall make
no law respecting an establishment of religion, or
prohibiting the free exercise thereof …
While the Supreme Court has interpreted
this particular part of the First Amendment to mean "the separation of
church and state" or the "wall of separation," historians
dispute this in light of the writings of those who brought about the Bill of
Rights to the U.S. Constitution.
The First Amendment they say, does not, in fact, prohibit the government
from supporting religion, but it does prohibit the government from supporting
only one religion or establishing a state religion. Such does not prohibit the government
from supporting all religions equally.
Thus in the context of the First Amendment, vouchers to religious
schools would not be illegal so long as those vouchers could be used at any
religious school. As Congress is forbidden from "prohibiting the free exercise
thereof", Congress would also be prohibited from attaching conditions to
the receipt of the voucher money.
Please do not stop reading here,
presuming that the answer is apparent, and no further knowledge is needed. Such is definitely not the case. This is the ideal under literal
interpretation of the First Amendment.
The reality, however, is that the
Supreme Court interpretation of the First Amendment has been otherwise,
creating a situation where government support of religion in private and
parochial schools is forbidden, even though a conflict exists in and of the
fact that government schools are teaching the religion of humanism in the
classroom.
Private institutions have also learned
that accepting money from the government also means that they must comply with
such government regulations as the government deems appropriate. A few years back, Hillsdale College in
Michigan found this to be the case when they accepted students with Pell
Grants. The courts ruled that even
though the grants were to private citizens, Hillsdale accepting those grants
subjected Hillsdale to government regulation.
These court decisions render an
unfavorable environment for private and parochial schools to accept government
vouchers. For this reason, and
until the current environment changes, I oppose government vouchers for private
and parochial schools as such will destroy the autonomy of both.
Lynn M Stuter
Education Researcher
Washington State
© September
1999; Lynn M Stuter
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