Word: voucher
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...proposing a voucher system that would subsidize the tuition of children who choose parochial schools, the Bush Administration is confronting one of the nation's sacrosanct principles: the First Amendment's stricture against "establishment of religion" creates a wall between church and state. That hurdle, while high, may not be impossible to surmount. Over the years the Supreme Court has wrestled with the distinction between direct funding of religious institutions, which is forbidden, and indirect aid that is designed to serve a secular purpose, which may be permissible...
...government aid -- direct or indirect -- to sectarian schools. In 1983, by a 5-to-4 vote, it let stand a Minnesota law that permits parents to deduct parochial school tuition from their state income taxes. Many experts believe there is a good chance the court would uphold a voucher plan like the one the Administration proposes. "It is exceedingly unlikely that this will be seen as a forbidden form of establishment," says Harvard law professor Laurence Tribe, a leading constitutional scholar. "Given the existing doctrine about the separation of church and state, I do not see a serious First Amendment...
...PRIVATE-SCHOOL OPTION. It began as a last-minute 1989 budget compromise in Wisconsin, an odd-couple deal between Tommy Thompson, the conservative Republican Governor, and Polly Williams, a black-separatist Democratic state representative from Milwaukee. The result was a virtually unprecedented school-voucher plan: the state approved legislation that would allow a group of inner-city Milwaukee students to attend private schools with $2,500 tuition grants. Bitterly opposed by the N.A.A.C.P. and teachers' unions, the program was delayed for a year and whittled down in size. "What about the common school?" Williams asks in response to her critics...
...what can a 258-student experiment reveal about how a free market in education would work? There are, after all, 97,000 students in the Milwaukee public schools. Without greater funding and many more alternative schools, the voucher plan will remain mostly a symbol of black anger at the quality of public education. Herbert Grover, Wisconsin's superintendent of public instruction and a fierce opponent of the voucher program, argues, "Our preppy President went to Phillips Academy, which costs about $13,000 a year. But it's O.K. to set a limit of $2,500 for little black kids...
Tribe also discussed the constitutionality of President Bush's recent proposal to introduce vouchers into the educational system. "There's nothing unconstitutional about a voucher system that's very broadly based," he said. "Something may be a terrible idea, but be constitutional," added Tribe, who counsels many in the Democratic Party...