A charged debate over federally funded school vouchers awaits Congress when an appropriations bill for the District of Columbia comes up for a vote at the end of the month.
The bill contains a provision that would for the first time authorize federal tax dollars for vouchers to be used at private and religious schools.
The voucher initiative is part of a 14-point reform plan attached to the district’s appropriations bill. It would authorize a five-year, $42 million “tuition scholarship” program.
Under the plan, $3,000 scholarships would be given to selected low-income students for tuition and transportation to private or religious schools. Additional $1,500 remedial education scholarships would be available for after- school programs.
The voucher debate will mark the first time a challenge to the principle of church-state separation has come to the floor of the current Congress.
Lawmakers have considered school prayer measures and a religious equality amendment, but none of the proposals has moved outside committee rooms.
School vouchers, meanwhile, have proved to be one of the most explosive and divisive issues in the American Jewish community.
Orthodox Jewish organizations see vouchers as the best for improving access to a quality education.
But other Jewish group charge that vouchers would undermine the First Amendment principle of church-state separation.
“If our community is concerned about our children’s lack of a quality education, this is one way to address the issue – to improve the accessibility for Jewish children to a solid Jewish education,” said Betty Ehrenberg, director of the Institute for Public Affairs at the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America.
“The Jewish community is now facing a crisis of continuity,” Ehrenberg added. “Jews are asking that their children be educated as Jews, but many Jews are afraid that the cost of private Jewish day schools can be prohibitive. Our community leaders recognize that depends on private Jewish education.”
For opponents of the district voucher plan, it is “both bad public policy and it’s unconstitutional,” said Jess Hordes, director of the Anti-Defamation League’s Washington office.
The ADL, the American Jewish Congress, the American Jewish Committee, the Union of American Hebrew Congregations and the National Council of Jewish Women have joined a coalition of more than 40 education, civil liberties and religious organizations in opposing the voucher plan.
“Once you get into a situation where the government begins to get its fingers into religion,” Hordes said, “you embark on a course that is going to be difficult and tragic for the notion of separation of church and state and for the religious liberties and freedoms that flow from that.”
Voucher opponents in the Senate intend to filibuster when the legislation comes up for a floor vote Feb. 27, according to Hordes, who believes that they “stand a strong chance” of killing the proposal.
Among the measure’s supporters in Sen. Joseph Lieberman (D-Conn.), an Orthodox Jew and a longtime proponent of vouchers, who introduced legislation last year along with Sen. Dan Coats (R-Ind.) that would give low-income parents vouchers to send their children to private and parochial schools.
The legislation, which is still pending, would create up to 20 demonstration projects for three years to test the theory that vouchers will benefit children in the poorest American school districts.
An aide to Lieberman said the voucher proposal in the district could serve as a similar trial balloon.
“If it goes into effect and works and if you see some improvement for the kids in question, then it certainly gives the whole concept a boost,” the aide said.
The Clinton administration has said it objects to the voucher initiative, along with other provisions that would cut the district’s budget and limit abortions at public facilities.
Marc Stern, co-director of the legal department for AJCongress, said he sees federally funded vouchers as tantamount to a “church-state revolution.”
“It doesn’t necessarily mean with vouchers you’d have compulsory prayer, but it would be a wholesale revision of the Constitution,” Stern said.
Voucher proponents, however, do not see the plan as government interference in organized religion.
Because the vouchers would be given directly to parents, they argue, the government could successfully avoid entanglement in religious matters.
“I think as a community it’s in our interests to re-evaluate some of the long- standing `orthodoxies’ about our absolute opposition to any form of governmental assistance to parents who want to choose religious education for their children,” said David Zweibel, director of government affairs and general counsel for Agudath Israel of America, an Orthodox group.
Both sides anticipate that the issue will wind up in the Supreme Court, where it remains uncertain which argument would prevail.
Constitutional issues aside, Stern believes that voucher programs would undermine the Jewish community’s historic commitment to public education.
Moreover, he sees vouchers as “a confession of failure that we can have schools that serve everybody. There’s no pretending that our current public schools do that well for everyone, but at least they strive for that.”
He added, “There’s all too much evidence that our society is fragmenting, and vouchers would hurry that process.
“Those parents who are the most put together are most likely to take advantage of the limited number of vouchers. It’s going to leave behind the kids who come from the most fragile families, making it more difficult to teach anything in the public schools.”
Zweibel, however, said he would consider it a worthwhile trade-off it families and education receive a boost at the expense of the public school system.
“What’s of primary importance is the education of children and the empowerment of families,” he said.
Other concerns opponents raise the possibility that extremist groups could qualify for vouchers to set up their own educational institutions.
Those schools could “serve as breeding grounds for a new generation of haters,” Stern said.
Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan “could undoubtedly set up schools, as well as the militias and Christian Identity churches,” Stern said. “It’s not so easy to devise a scheme that leaves choice with the parents and that decides that some choices are not good ones.”
Voucher proponents maintain that carefully written plans would allay such fears.
Meanwhile, while voucher advocates say all they are asking for is a trial run, their opponents say they are largely concerned about precedent.
A voucher program initiated by the federal government could have far-reaching implications for both church-state separation and the way American views its public school system, say voucher opponents.
Zweibel sees it differently.
“Anyone who pretends that education in this country is healthy ought to look at the statistics from other countries and ought to look at the reality of what’s going on in urban centers in public schools,” he said.
“To say we can’t try anything to shake up the system because who knows what will happen – that rings very hallow to me.”
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