The US Supreme Court rejected two separate challenges to Arizona's K-12 scholarship tax credit program in ACSTO v. Winn this week. The program offers a dollar-for-dollar tax cut to anyone who donates to a non-profit School Tuition Organization (STO). STOs, in turn, use the money to help families pay for private schooling. The rationale underlying the Court's ruling highlights a unique advantage that tax credits have over other ways of funding education: they expand both freedom of choice for parents and freedom of conscience for taxpayers.
Plaintiffs had argued that cutting a person's taxes is equivalent to spending government money, and so taxpayers were being compelled to support religion when credits were used for donations to religious STOs. The Court said, "that is incorrect."
Unlike the funding of public schools, which is compulsory for all taxpayers, participation in Arizona's tax credit program is voluntary. If an individual chooses not to donate to an STO, his taxes are collected just as they have always been, and those dollars cannot be used for any sectarian purpose. Furthermore, if a taxpayer does choose to make a donation, he is free to select the STO most consistent with his own values. Arizona has scores of different STOs, some with a religious emphasis and some without.
The freedom of conscience afforded to taxpayers under this program is wholly consistent with the founding ideals of our nation. In 1786, the commonwealth of Virginia passed the Act for Establishing Religious Freedom, written by Thomas Jefferson and steadfastly supported by James Madison. The Act declares that "to compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves... is sinful and tyrannical."
It is precisely because of this compulsion that we have suffered an endless succession of public school wars from the very origins of our state-funded school systems. In their early days, these systems were religious and sectarian, using a Protestant version of the Bible in daily readings to students. Riots ensued when Catholic families in Philadelphia asked for permission to either use their own version of the Bible or to have their children exempted from the readings. Dozens were killed and St. Augustine's Church was burned to the ground - a bitter irony given that Protestant George Washington had paid for part of this Catholic Church's construction.
In the generations since, we have fought over school prayer, sex education and the teaching of everything from human origins to multiplication tables. The reason we have been plagued by these public school wars is that we have compelled all taxpayers to support a single official organ of education. It is impossible for such a monolithic system to reflect the diversity of values of our pluralistic society. In our attempt to build unity we have instead compelled conformity, which has, in turn, fomented conflict.
A century-and-a-half of this compelled conformity has left our nation no more unified than it was before. Indeed the past decade has seen deep political and ideological divisions, with civility often in short supply.
The Supreme Court's Winn ruling reminds us is that there is a way to finance universal education without resorting to socially corrosive compulsion. Indeed if we wish our schools to promote mutual respect among people of different religions and world views, we must respect the right of parents to offer their children an education consistent with their values, and we must not compel taxpayers to support forms of instruction that violate their convictions. Tax credit programs such as Arizona's do both.
What would be the social effects of such a system, if greatly expanded? Critics fear it would Balkanize the public into warring factions, but that is what happens under our current one-size-fits-all approach. Having studied education systems from their earliest origins in Athens and Sparta 2,500 years ago, and around the world in the present day, I have found that social conflict is minimized when no one is compelled to send their children to a school, or to fund a school, whose teachings they oppose. Once families and taxpayers no longer feel that their personal beliefs and traditions are under attack, these systems reveal a deep commonality of purpose among parents that builds a sense of unity and civic-mindedness.
There are other ways of funding universal choice in education, but only tax credits (either for parent's own education expenses or for donations to STOs) respect the freedom of conscience of taxpayers as well as the freedom of choice of parents. If we truly wish our schools to help build strong, harmonious communities, there is no better way than to adopt such programs at the state level on a grand scale.
Andrew J. Coulson directs the Cato Institute's Center for Educational Freedom, and is author of Market Education: The Unknown History
The "education wars" I've witnessed are usually about about keeping the religious doctrine/influence out of public education as our US Constitution dictates.
Indeed, many persons came to our country with the purpose of escaping religious tyranny-the ultimate result of mixing church with state.
"Our current system does not compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves". amen
So if we promote more children going to theirs religiously segregated private schools, there will be more mutual respect? I think that argument does not hold up.
We ALL got along, despite having many different religions (and some were openly atheists). In private school everyone sat together, there were no "groups" and everyone was a friend. We never ostracized anyone and school was free of bullying, teasing and (remarkably) I never heard a word of profanity in 4 years.
Contrast that with the cesspool of public schools.
Many parents are responsible stewards of their children's educations. But many parents would gladly opt out, or at the very least choose a school system that doesn't require work, growth or participation. Many parents would love the opportunity to choose a school that provides a crappy education, or which solidly reinforces their groundless and ill-conceived beliefs.
The whole notion of public education exists because a democracy requires educated people. We all have a stake in Johnny's education; Johnny's parents are not the only ones who deserve to have a voice.
Not that a shill for the Cato Institute would pay any heed to what the good Justice has to say or prior SCOTUS precedent.
BTW, precedent is not sancrosanct.
2.) Precedent is the backbone of the American legal system. To say precedent is not sacrosanct to our legal system makes as much sense as saying the Bible is not holy for Christians. If precedent can be ignored and overridden by any judge without solid foundation then our entire legal system would be at the mercy of the whims of judges instead of being ruled by the law. We are a government run by laws at least in theory.
Of course the whole idea of indirect impact is at odds with the party line at the Cato Institute and Libertarian philosophy in general. You would argue that the only forms of harm, force, and fraud worth noticing are those which are direct while ignoring the whole host of other forms of coercion and support that take less obvious but equally effective routes.
What ought to be realized is there is no way to teach children without invoking some unproven axioms, some framework, philosophy or worldview that is either religious or anti-religious. Even Math has its logic and proofs and order that may conflict with Buddhist teachings on the nature of reality or the moral squishiness of moral relativists. It ought not be in the governments purview to distinguish between philosophy and religion. Yet for all our desire to make our schools entirely "secular" there is no simple way to make this distinction.
The hope in the past may have been, for a given community, the values of the schools reflected their (such as protecting the environment, the differences between truth and experience and the nature of the value of human life and the meaning of equality). This philosophy (or are such notions religious?) permeating literature, science and the teaching of history is now more than ever confronted with a diverse community which does not believe it reflects their views. It is only reasonable to allow them to take their children to a school reflecting their views instead of insisting there is one standard "secular" system to be supported.
The original point of public education, aside from the general economic benefit of an educated populace, was that democracy cannot survive without an educated populace capable of making informed choices. Less openly stated, the point was to educate newcomers to America on the basic values of our constitutional system. Without a common understanding of the underlying principles of self-government, can democracy survive here? Aren't we already seeing the effects of a dumbed down education that fails to emphasize the critical choices of self-government (e.g,, Bachman's gross misstatements of U.S. history; Palin's failure to understand our constitution, etc.).
Private schools cherry-pick students. Hard-to-educate students, which tend to be poor students with apathetic parents, don't go to private schools in the first place. If a student isn't behaving or doing the work, they get kicked out of a private school. Not so for public schools, so the notion of comparing the education outcomes of private schools to public schools is ridiculous. Even though the private schools have lower standards for teachers, they've got higher ones for students, and if there's a difference in performance, you can be fairly sure that's the cause.
But on top of that, they're not cheaper. Religious schools are partially funded by the church. When we compare non-religious private school tuition to public school per-pupil funding, we see that private schools aren't cheaper. Quite the reverse. Elementary private schools charged, on average, $15,945 per year in 2008. Secondary schools averaged $27,302. That's quite a lot more than the $10,000 or so, average, that public schools spend to educate a much more diverse, much more difficult to teach group of students.
I'll bet Repubs were hoping that argument didn't win. How would they then justify their tax breaks for the rich without calling them spending?
When revenues are diverted to Church schools which then result in cuts to public schools, there is a CLEAR connection between the credits (donations to religious organizations) and the cuts (revenue shortfalls caused by donations to religious organizations).
Freedom of conscience does NOT include the right to diminish the ability of a society to provide needed services for ALL its members. Religious donations should NOT be made on the public's dime.
Yet another victory for the "I got mine; the heck with you" crowd.
The charge that society is somehow hampered in its ability to provide eduction services as a result of the Court's decision is equally bogus. You do realize that the "needed services" are still being provided, just by another non-goverment entity, right? And that this represents a cost reduction to the government, right?
You're free to donate to a religion if you like. But the government shouldn't subsidize the donation.
ALL government spending on services is "socialist". We live in a "society". The schools, the roads, the airports, the police, the fire department, the military, Social Security, Medicare, the prisons, the courts, parks, beaches, FDA, DEA, NIH, and on and on are ALL socialist institutions. You wouldn't last a week without them.