Friday, June 28, 2002 | 4:31 a.m.
WEEKEND EDITION: June 30, 2002
Now that Thursday's U.S. Supreme Court decision removes constitutional obstacles to school voucher programs, state legislatures throughout the nation will receive proposals to approve this option for parents. The Nevada Legislature should show restraint as advocates come forward because we see vouchers creating more harm than good.
Voucher programs provide parents with annual dollops of taxpayer money to send their children to private schools for kindergarten through 12th grade. Vouchers have been been advocated by critics of public education for decades, but the question of constitutionality had been keeping them at bay. Because voucher money is often less than the tuition at non-secular private schools, the main beneficiaries are religious schools, whose tuitions are more affordable. Until Thursday's court decision, no one was sure if providing religious schools, even indirectly, with taxpayer money would violate the Constitution regarding separation of church and state. The Supreme Court settled that question Thursday with its 5-4 ruling concerning a pilot voucher program in Cleveland. There, the court ruled, the voucher program is legal because, theoretically, parents have a choi ce among several private schools, some of them religious, some of them not -- although 97 percent of the Cleveland parents ! opting for private schools chose religious schools.
Voucher proponents say they will allow students from low-income families to escape perennially failing public schools. This may be true on a short-term, individual basis. But already cash-starved public schools will face long-term hits, as they are funded on a per-pupil basis. If Nevada eventually accedes to a voucher trend, and that is not a certainty, it must ensure that acceptance standards at any private school receiving public money are the same as at public schools -- that is, no child should be denied admittance for any reason, including learning or physical disability. Without rigid scrutiny in this area, the rich diversity now found in public schools, so critical to personal development, will vanish. And the quality of public education will continually diminish as private schools develop a cottage industry aided by discriminatory admissions.
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