Public school vouchers ok for religious schools; U.S. Supreme Court

Jet, July 15, 2002

The U.S. Supreme Court recently legitimized a controversial Ohio program that allowed public school vouchers, state tax dollars, to be used by parents to send their children to parochial schools.

In a 5-4 ruling, the Supreme Court said the school voucher program does not constitute the establishment of religion. It essentially puts to rest the long-running debate over whether similar voucher programs would infringe upon the constitutional separation of church and state. "We believe that the program challenged here is a program of true private choice," Chief Justice William Rehnquist wrote for the majority.

The court said it didn't matter how much taxpayer money goes into religious schools, or whether the program disproportionately benefits those schools over secular institutions, as long as programs did not provide aid directly to schools and gave parents a genuine choice.

President Bush said the ruling was a "landmark ruling" that "offered the hope of education throughout our country."

"This decision clears the way for other innovative school choice programs so that no child in America will be left behind," said Bush.

The high court chose to resolve the conflict in Cleveland because the entire school district had been under state control after it was declared a "crisis of magnitude" in 1995.

To counter the crisis, the Ohio General Assembly adopted the voucher program, which offered scholarships to poor children in kindergarten through 9th grade.

Vouchers were designed to remedy a crisis in urban schools by giving low-income parents public money to send their children to private schools. The program paid for 90 percent of the annual tuition at private secular or religious schools.

Once parents qualify, the vouchers are allocated by lottery. Checks are made out to the parents, who then endorse them to the participating school of choice. In the 1999-2000 school year, of the 3,700 students awarded vouchers, 96 percent used them at religious schools.

The decision, the last ruling on the last day of the court's annual term, was seen by proponents of the program as the most significant educational ruling since the Brown vs. Board of Education school desegregation decision in 1954. It also ensures government leaders will have to include the issue of vouchers along with standardized testing and teacher qualifications when deciding how to improve public education.