The Problem with School Voucher Decisions
Today, the ACLU and other Church/State separation groups decided to take on a Douglas County Colorado's school voucher program. (
source). The school board for Douglas county, one of Colorado's wealthiest counties, decided to implement the voucher program for this fall. The problem with this and countless other times the idea has been tried is that the Federal Constitution and most state constitutions provide for a clear separation of church and state thereby preventing state and federal tax money from being used to pay for the education of religious school tuitions. It stands to reason in a non-theocratic nation, that federal and state tax money wouldn't be used to fund the schools of one religious or another. Experience has demonstrated that insofar as the tax money is funding private, Christian, parochial school many Christians are just fine with that, but they fail to consider when they put forth this type of legislation that the USA is not a Christian-exclusive nation and their tax money may just as easily be used to fund students to attend Jewish, Islamic, and other religious schools.
The shame of it all is there is an easy solution if what school districts want is for kids to be able to attend private schools. They simply need to state the vouchers may not be used at religious schools. Do these school board members really want students to have choice or do they want to secretly fund religious schools? If they want choice, this would give them choice. A 2010 study by the College Board found that private school students tend to score more than 200 points, on average, higher than public school students across the nation. (
source). Of course, there are papers written
ad nauseam accounting for this disparity. Unfortunately, the reality is that there are many wealthy kids who do poorly in private schools, but there's little chance for an economically challenged child to do well if there are no funds for him or her to attend a private school. Moreover, private schools raise hundreds of millions annually to offer need-based scholarships for economically challenged families. They could either admit more students of need or subsidize them more if vouchers were permitted.
The discussion may be intensified because, bottom-line, why should the government be involved in funding education in the first place? No where in the Constitution is a guarantee for free public education stated. The very same nation that expends countless resources fighting a national health system advocates equally vehemently for a national public education system even when the wealthiest and most religious don't utilize it. In fact, some have argued well that the system was set up to indoctrinate the middle and lower classes into accepting their station in life – as in teach the poor and middle class to aspire to be poor and middle class. Why not, therefore, just expect people to pay for their own children to go to school or not? Why not just treat education like health care. If you are fortunate enough to have access to funds for an education great! If you are wealthy enough to afford a better school that this other family, hey, that's capitalism – work harder, take on more jobs, etc. Taxes could immediately be lowered across that nation if all of education in the USA were privatized. Doesn't competition make things better? Every debate against public health care can be applied equally well against public education. When you put this also in the context that public schools really aren't doing that well across the land, it seems like a no brainer to either (a) end the taxes and let the market fall where it may or (b) allow people to use vouchers to send their child to any non-parochial school of their choice.