Vouchers

views updated

VOUCHERS

Widespread discontent with public schools has precipitated demands that parents be given some choice about which school their children will attend. Several states have adopted laws affording parents some choice among public schools in their area. These laws have attracted few constitutional attacks. Many people argue that choice plans should be broadened to offer parents government vouchers redeemable at any accredited school, public or private, including religious, or parochial, schools. Supporters of this approach cite as a model the GI Bill, under which the federal government pays certain expenses of military veterans to attend any accredited college.

Proponents contend that vouchers will produce better education, especially for poor and minority students who often fare poorly in public schools. They cite the superior performance of private-school students. They also believe that public schools would be shaken out of the complacency induced by their monopoly on state funding and prodded to do better by competition from private schools. Further, proponents want parents to be able to choose for their children an education consistent with their values, whether religiously based or not. Opponents of vouchers deny that private schools generally provide a better education; they ascribe any superior performance to private schools' "skimming the cream" by taking better students. They also question whether public schools would benefit from increased competition. They feel that vouchers would lead to further skimming of the cream, leaving public schools to handle the most difficult students.

Critics further assert that voucher plans would be unconstitutional. They fear that vouchers would exacerbate racial segregation in violation of equal protection as interpreted in brown v. board of education (1954, 1955). They also argue that vouchers redeemed at parochial schools would constitute government aid to religious institutions and an unconstitutional establishment of religion.

Defenders respond that vouchers would not worsen school segregation, which is already widespread, but that if they did, this effect would result from individual choices, not from state action, which is necessary to invoke the fourteenth amendment. Moreover, segregative effects could be avoided by requiring participating schools to meet certain standards of racial composition in admissions procedures. Defenders also deny that vouchers would establish religion. Pointing again to the GI Bill, they see vouchers merely giving parents a choice in obtaining a service that the government subsidizes for secular reasons; any benefit to religious institutions is incidental and thus of no constitutional concern. Critics reply that even an indirect benefit is an unlawful establishment.

No state has yet adopted a true voucher program, although a few have proposed limited programs for low-income children. Confused and conflicting Supreme Court pronouncements on aid to religious schools preclude any prediction of how the Court would handle the issue. Quite possibly, vouchers could be upheld for the same reasons that the GI Bill is considered constitutional, especially if steps were taken to avoid racial segregation. Some kind of voucher program might even be necessary to accommodate children with religious objections to what is taught in public schools.

George W. Dent
(1992)