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Why We Are Challenging School Vouchers
Howard Simon, Executive Director
June 1999
Now that Gov. Jeb Bush got the Legislature to approve the largest school voucher program in the country, it will be up to the ACLU (along with other allied organizations) to come to the defense of public education and constitutional principles.
The threat of a veto by the late Gov. Lawton Chiles had previously restrained the Legislature, but vouchers were approved in the 1999 Legislative Session despite polls indicating that Floridians oppose diverting tax dollars from public schools to private/parochial schools.
How did he do it? Largely by the deceptive repackaging of vouchers: Never call them "vouchers," they are "opportunity scholarships"; tell the voters they will be "revenue neutral," and that it's not going to cost them anything, even though it will be a new and huge government financial obligation to private schools; repeat that it is very limited, and just one part of an overall school reform program; portray critics as defenders of the status quo who are willing to leave kids trapped in "failing schools"; and pretend that the words of the State's Constitution ("No revenue...shall ever be taken from the public treasury directly or indirectly in aid of any church, sect, or religious denomination or in aid of any sectarian institution.") don't mean what they say.
No group of educators and education reformers would have designed a program for the improvement of the public schools that facilitates their abandonment. School vouchers are promoted more by politicians, economic theorists, business opportunists and parochial school advocates.
It is true that some public schools fail to meet the needs of the young people they are supposed to serve, and too often this affects students in rural America and the inner cities. But it is precisely children in the worst performing schools who will be hurt most by a weakened and abandoned public school system. Vouchers will drain badly needed funds from public education while diverting those funds to private and religious schools, and the children who remain in their neighborhood public school (the vast majority) will be attending schools that are more impoverished.
Voucher advocates claim that vouchers will help kids in "failing" schools, and that this is not simply another attempt to help parents who choose churchaffiliated schools pay the tuition bills. And while vouchers may make it possible for some students to attend private or parochial schools, the predominant effect of vouchers is the use of tax dollars to support parochial education at public expense and to provide financial assistance to parents who already send their children to private schools.
The issue of education reform deserves more honesty and less euphemism than it got in Florida's 1999 Legislature. Most private schools are churchaffiliated schools, and the mission of parochial schools involves training the next generation of congregants. Though we are a richer nation because of the contributions of parochial schools, the right to choose to send one's children to a churchaffiliated school does not include the right to have the taxpayers fund that choice. But vouchers force every taxpayer to contribute to the support of religious institutions and parochial schools.
Will vouchers enhance "choice"? Vouchers offer no guarantee of admission. Remember the 11 yearold girl with cerebral palsy who was in tears outside Miami's private Gulliver Academy? Despite having paid the tuition, school officials rejected her because they could not accommodate her due to her disability. If private schools are free to reject students with special education needs or for some other discriminatory reason, then it is the private school - not parents - who have the "choice".
Voucher plans in other states, save one, have been rejected by the public in referenda (California, Michigan), ruled unconstitutional (Puerto Rico, Maine, Cleveland) or struck down but are still on appeal (Vermont). Until the recent decision involving the Milwaukee program, it has not been constitutionally permissible anywhere in the country to use taxpayer dollars to support the attendance of students at a parochial K12 school.
But however the courts decide the legal issues, vouchers are bad public policy. If the goal is to improve the education of our kids, legislative discussions would focus on improving the neighborhood public school, reducing class size, funding innovative programs, setting performance standards for students, increasing teacher training, insuring adequate books, supplies and access to the latest technology, improving the physical environment in which education takes place and increasing parental involvement in schools and their kids' lives. Vouchers, instead, subsidize abandonment of the public schools and abandonment of efforts to improve the public schools.
The public school system has been an engine of opportunity for generations of poor and middleclass Americans. It is the vehicle for advancement that most parents and our democracy rely on, and it will be irreparably damaged by voucher schemes.
