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Legislation to use public money to pay private school tuition passes PA Senate
Critics say school vouchers would hurt already under-funded public schools and that sending money to religious schools would violate state constitution.
Legislation to use public money to pay private school tuition passes PA Senate
Yesterday the Pennsylvania Senate passed school vouchers legislation that would give public funds to poor students at underperforming schools to attend private schools, including religious institutions. The legislation has been a priority for Republican Gov. Tom Corbett, and received support from some Democrats, notably Philadelphia Democratic Sen. Anthony Williams. But the teachers' union, public education advocates, and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) immediately criticized the legislation, which will now be taken up by the House.
“Taxpayers see school vouchers for what they are — an expensive new entitlement program that takes money from the poorest public schools and puts it into the pockets of private and religious schools that are not accountable financially or academically to taxpayers,” according to a statement from Jerry T. Jordan, President of the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers. "Meanwhile, public schools with inadequate funding are left with even fewer resources than before to provide the education that disadvantaged children need to lift them out of poverty."
Indeed, Gov. Corbett presided over a nearly billion-dollar cut to public schools this summer, and his school vouchers legislation would use an increasingly limited pot of public school monies to send students to private schools. And there is no guarantee that any given private school will admit a given student. Unlike public schools, they can turn down whomever they choose, including because of a student’s religion or sexual orientation — or just because of weak academic performance, which will be the case with many lower-income students.
A majority of Pennsylvanians oppose voucher schemes.
The vouchers, which would average (according to the Inquirer) $6,779 in Philadelphia, are unlikely to cover the large tuitions many elite private schools charge. And, of major concern to those who like to maintain the constitutional separation between church and state, the vouchers will fund religious schools — big time. Thus, the Philadelphia Catholic Archdiocese, otherwise preoccupied defending itself against countless child sexual abuse claims, sees it fit to lobby the state for a chunk of our taxpayer dollars: in a sense, the vouchers are a backdoor government bailout of the Catholic Church and other sectarian groups.
And the Church admitted as much in an email blast sent out to supporters this past February, saying that “SB 1 will allow even more families a chance to get a Catholic education. More students in our classrooms is good news for our schools; more students will help keep Catholic schools open.”
The Education Law Center reports that, according to a fiscal note attached to the legislation, the majority of taxpayer-funded school vouchers will go to students already enrolled in private and religious schools: $50 million of public money is projected to go to students already so enrolled for the 2013-14 school year, with just $25 million going to students who opt to leave a low-performing public school. One hundred percent of eligible students already attending private and religious schools will take advantage of vouchers while only 9 percent of eligible public school students will. (The ELC release is at the bottom of this post.)
"The new Fiscal Note tells the same story as the bill's original financial calculations: This legislation is a giveaway of public, taxpayer dollars to private and religious institutions, not a serious effort to help improve public schools or improve real opportunities to learn for our public school students," said Baruch Kintisch, Director of Policy Advocacy for the Education Law Center.
Indeed, the small amount of money provided per voucher nearly guarantees that religious schools will be the only private schools most recipients can afford.
While voucher proponents say they are throwing a lifeline to students in bad schools, public school advocates see a thinly veiled attempt to privatize public education. Conservative pro-business politicians and many Democrats have successfully pushed for a dramatic expansion of controversial public charter schools in recent years. Now the question of vouchers, after years laying dormant, is back on the top of the agenda for the so-called “education reform” movement, which seeks to turn over much of public education to private companies.
(The Pennsylvania legislation will also ease charter expansion and raise the limit on the Educational Improvement Tax Credit (EITC), which gives businesses tax breaks to those who donate money to support low-income students' private school tuition.)
According to the Inquirer, 88 Philadelphia schools would qualify for the vouchers.
Andy Hoover, legislative director of the ACLU of Pennsylvania, says that a legal challenge in state court is likely if the voucher legislation is signed into law. Though the U.S. Supreme Court has upheld the constitutionality of vouchers, the Pennsylvania Constitution (Article III, Section 15, for example) doesn’t mince words on funding religious establishments: “No money raised for the support of the public schools of the Commonwealth shall be appropriated to or used for the support of any sectarian school.”
“All of those senators took an oath to uphold the constitution,” says Hoover. “If legislators can ignore the constitution when its prohibition on a vouchers scheme is so clear, none of our rights are safe. Our senators are willfully ignoring the state constitution and punting to the courts.”
Hoover says that while the Pennsylvania Supreme Court has upheld the constitutionality of using public funds to provide bus service to children attending religious schools, they did so only because the money was not going directly to the religious schools. Yet when the U.S. Supreme Court made its 2002 ruling in favor of vouchers, it ruled that vouchers made the cut: the public money, they said, was going not to religious schools, but to parents who make a “true private choice.”
The saving grace for Philadelphia’s embattled public schools might be found not in a court of law but in intra-party squabbles in the state GOP: The New York Times has reported that vouchers have divided the Pennsylvania Tea Party, and The Inquirer says that House Republicans are less than enthusiastic about moving the legislation.
**
EDUCATION LAW CENTER NEWS ALERT
Oct. 26, 2011
Senate Bill 1 Fiscal Note Shows Majority of Voucher Dollars Going to Students Already Enrolled in Private and Religious Schools
The final draft of the Republican Senate Appropriations Committee's Fiscal Note on the amended Senate Bill 1 reveals the majority of taxpayer-funded school vouchers will go to students already enrolled in private and religious schools.
- In the 2013-14 school year $50 million of public, taxpayer money is expected to fund tuition vouchers for students already enrolled in private and religious schools, compared to $25 million for students seeking to use a voucher to leave a low-performing public school, according to the Fiscal Note.
- In addition, from 2013 through the 2015-16 school year a total of $150 million of public, taxpayer money is expected to fund tuition for students already enrolled in private and religious schools -- that's 60 percent of the total voucher funding, according to the Fiscal Note.
The Fiscal Note shows relatively few students attending public schools will use the voucher: Only 9 percent of eligible students attending low-reforming public schools are expected to be accepted with a voucher at a non-public school, while 100 percent of eligible students currently enrolled in private and religious schools will receive voucher funding.
"The new Fiscal Note tells the same story as the bill's original financial calculations: This legislation is a giveaway of public, taxpayer dollars to private and religious institutions, not a serious effort to help improve public schools or improve real opportunities to learn for our public school students," said Baruch Kintisch, Director of Policy Advocacy for the Education Law Center.
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