Having Cake and Eating It, Too - report on how private schools would want education vouchers to work

Humanist, March, 1999 by Edd Doerr

Give us your money and some of your kids but not your rules." That rather succinctly summarizes the findings in the 145-page U.S. Department of Education final report on Barriers, Benefits, and Costs of Using Private Schools to Alleviate Overcrowding in Public Schools released on November 3, 1998. Although this carefully researched report, ordered by the Republican-controlled Congress in September 1996, deals primarily with the subject of its title, it bears so importantly on the campaign of the religious right and its secular allies to get tax support for sectarian and other private schools through vouchers or tax credits that its findings merit wide attention.

The premise of the study is that nonpublic schools, "in exchange for tuition reimbursement," might be utilized to relieve overcrowding in large urban areas. The twenty-two urban areas studied were Baltimore, Buffalo, Chicago, Dade County (Miami, Florida), Dallas, Detroit, Duval County (Jacksonville, Florida), El Paso, Houston, Long Beach (California), Los Angeles, Memphis, Milwaukee, Nashville, New Orleans, New York, Oakland, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Portland (Oregon), San Antonio, and San Diego. These were selected from among thirty-four large-enrollment school districts because they had the worst overcrowding problems.

The following is a summary of the report's major findings:

* Some 3,000 nonpublic schools enroll 774,000 students in the urban communities studied, about 16 percent of all students in those areas compared to less than 11 percent nationally.

* Catholic schools enroll 57 percent of nonpublic students, while 30 percent are enrolled in other denominational schools and 13 percent in nonsectarian schools.

* Minority students amount to 43 percent of nonpublic enrollment compared to 22 percent in nonpublic schools nationwide but well short of the public schools' 82 percent in the urban areas studied.

* Urban nonpublic schools reject 17 percent of the students who apply, in stark contrast to public schools, which accept all students. Unmentioned in the report is the fact that a private school's religious orientation largely determines who applies in the first place, which is why nonpublic schools tend to be religiously homogeneous.

* Most denominational schools (86 percent) would not admit voucher student transfers from public schools if they were required to exempt the kids from religious instruction or activities. The executive director of Christian Schools International (Christian Reformed or Calvinist schools) said his schools "would not allow the exemption because every class is permeated with a Christian religious viewpoint." Dr. Carl J. Moser of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod said Lutheran schools could not accept exemption because of their commitment to "maintaining our mission and our spiritual nature which permeates our total school program." The Reverend Bill Davis of the U.S. Catholic Conference said the exemption "strikes at the very nature of what a Catholic school is all about." Ageib Bilal of the Council of Islamic Schools in North America said that, in Muslim schools, "religious instruction [is] mandatory" though "participation in religious activities [could be] optional."

In addition to their unwillingness to exempt public-school transfers from religious instruction and activities, the report found that most nonpublic schools use admission procedures not permitted in public schools:

* 75 percent require written applications.

* 73 percent require student discipline records.

* 77 percent require interviews with students.

* 87 percent require interviews with parents.

* 58 percent require standardized achievement tests.

* 74 percent require "ability to perform at grade level."

Clearly, with a 17 percent rejection rate on top of "admission considerations," nonpublic schools practice "skimming" to get "better" students and keep out problem students. Furthermore, 68 percent of nonpublic schools are either "definitely" (41 percent) or "probably" (27 percent) "not interested" in accepting "special needs" children--children with physical or mental problems or disabilities, who must be accepted by public schools.

The report ignores, however, the question of nondenominational schools using creedal and life-style criteria in hiring and dismissing teachers, a fairly common practice. It also fails to note that one reason nonpublic schools appear to be cheaper to operate is that they pay teachers less and provide them with fewer benefits.

The bottom line, which nonpublic schools make abundantly clear, is that about 92 percent of them would be willing to accept transfers of students from overcrowded urban public schools only if they are allowed to maintain their current admissions, curriculum, and religious instruction and activities policies. If allowed, playing the game with the nonpublic schools' rules would obviously skim some of the "more desirable" students from public schools and increase the percentage of expensive-to-educate special-needs kids and discipline problems in public schools. But there is more.