Vouchers, tax credits make headway with states across the political spectrum

WASHINGTON

School-choice initiatives — akin to the quiet students in the back of a classroom — have kept a relatively low profile in recent years while steadily working their way to the front.

The movement was given a big boost in late March when the Indiana Supreme Court upheld one of the country's most comprehensive school-choice programs. The state court backed a 2002 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that said that because school vouchers primarily benefit families, they could not be viewed as an unconstitutional state support for religion.

Currently, there are 30 school-choice programs in 17 states and the District of Columbia, serving more than 250,000 students. School-choice programs — primarily vouchers and tax-credit scholarships, where companies or individuals receive credit for donating to nonprofit groups that provide students with scholarships — have continued to grow since 1990, when the first school-voucher program started in Milwaukee, followed by similar programs in Ohio and Florida.

In the past two years, five new states have added school-choice legislation, while other states have expanded programs already in place.

Slow pace, positive turnBut for all the steps forward, there are still school-choice programs that do not get approved, including a recent voucher proposal in Kansas. Congress also has not been keen on voucher legislation. Recently, the Senate voted down more than $14 billion in federal money for school vouchers for low-income families in an amendment to a spending bill.

John Schoenig, director of the University of Notre Dame's Program for Educational Access, acknowledges that the pace may be slow with school-choice initiatives, but he also thinks the movement is seeing a positive turn.

We've never had so much wind at our back, he said, noting that public opinion on the issue is changing. He said states that have accepted some type of school choice in recent years are across the political spectrum, such as Utah and Rhode Island.

Schoenig heads a program that was formed in 2010 to conduct research, training and outreach efforts to help low-income families obtain financial access to a faith-based education.

He said that as more states use vouchers or tax credits, it improves the likelihood of other states adopting them, noting that the more we can demonstrate success, the easier it is to debunk the myths out there and to say it is in our best interest to put educational choice on the table.

Approach with eyes openSchoenig said school choice provides unique opportunities for Catholic schools that the church should be taking more advantage of. For example, he said, there are 400,000 empty seats in Catholic schools nationwide and approximately 36 percent (of them) are in states that have a school-choice program.

Recent Catholic school closings, he added, may provide an impetus for creative thinking about ways to ensure these schools remain vital, such as lobbying for and tapping into school-choice legislation.

We shouldn't be afraid of what will happen if we work to transform Catholics schools, but we should be afraid of what will happen if we don't do anything, he stressed. In January, 40 bishops met in Washington to discuss school-choice options and how Catholic leaders can be more involved.

Dominican Sister John Mary Fleming, executive director of the U.S. bishops' Secretariat of Catholic Education, said that when bishops have been active in promoting some type of school-choice legislation, it often passes. But she also stressed that the bishops approach this with their eyes open being sure to avoid school and government entanglement and federal and state officials reaching into Catholic education.

Catholic News Service - May 9, 2013