The Wrong Ruling on Vouchers
The country has been waiting for several years
now to see how the Supreme Court would rule on school vouchers. Yesterday, in a 5-to-4 decision, the court issued a sweeping
ruling upholding Cleveland’s school voucher program. It was a bad decision on
constitutional grounds, and a bad one for American education.
In theory, Cleveland’s voucher program allows
children to use state stipends to go to any school they want. In practice, the
choice it offers them is between a failing public school system and the city’s
parochial schools. This is not a choice that the Constitution intended public
tax money to underwrite.
The problem with the Cleveland program
begins with the size of the stipends, which are capped at $2,250. That
is far less than most private schools cost. But it is just right for parochial
schools where, for a variety of reasons, tuition is far lower. Not
surprisingly, fully 96.6 percent of students end up taking their vouchers to
religiously affiliated schools.
Once students enroll in those schools,
they are subjected to just the sort of religious training the First Amendment
forbids the state to underwrite. In many cases, students are
required to attend Mass or other religious services. Tax dollars go to buy
Bibles, prayer books, crucifixes and other religious iconography. It is hard to
think of a starker assault on the doctrine of separation of church and state
than taking taxpayer dollars and using them to inculcate specific religious
beliefs in young people.
The majority argues that the Cleveland
program does not, as a technical matter, violate the First Amendment because
it is parents, not the government, who are choosing where the money goes. But
given the reality of education in Cleveland, parents do not have the wealth of
options that would make their selection of religious schools meaningful. And in
any case, the money ultimately comes from taxpayers, and therefore should not
be directed — by whatever route — to finance religious training.
This ruling does as much damage to education as
it does to the First Amendment. A common argument for
vouchers is that they improve public schools by forcing them to compete for
students. What is holding the public schools back, however, is not lack
of competitive drive but the resources to succeed. Voucher
programs like Cleveland’s siphon off public dollars, leaving struggling urban
systems with less money for skilled teachers, textbooks and computers. They
also skim off some of the best-performing students, and the most informed and
involved parents, from public schools that badly need their expertise and
energy.
Yesterday’s decision also undermines
one of the public school system’s most important functions: teaching democracy
and pluralism. In public schools, Americans of many
backgrounds learn together. In the religious schools that Cleveland taxpayers
are being forced to sponsor, Catholics are free to teach that their way is
best, and Jews, Muslims and those of other faiths can teach their
co-religionists that they have truth on their side.As
Justice John Paul Stevens wrote in dissent, “Whenever we remove a brick
from the wall that was designed to separate religion and government, we
increase the risk of religious strife and weaken the foundation of our
democracy.” This court has removed many bricks.
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