Monday, June 15, 1998

Public money, private schools hazardous mix

The Wisconsin state supreme court has gone a step beyond any other court in the past by ruling that taxpayers' money - public money - can be used to send children to private religious schools.

The First Amendment's prohibition against government establishment of religion is not thereby violated, the court reasoned, because the tuition money, in the form of vouchers, can be laundered through the parents.

The possible consequences of voucher plans to the public school system have been examined at length. Proponents say competition will improve the public schools; opponents say vouchers will only skim money and good students from the public school system. Given a voucher system extensive enough, the public schools could be left with the hardest students to educate, the learning disabled and the discipline problems.

Less examined is the potential impact on religious schools. Private colleges, which must answer to a host of government regulations, have shown the government is never far behind its money. In the long-term, would private schools be truly private?

The Milwaukee plan already prohibits voucher students in a religious school from being required to participate in religious activity. Catholic schools without Mass and religious instruction would seem to obviate the point of Catholic schools. Perhaps the question of what constitutes "religious activity" will ultimately be determined by federal regulation.

Beyond a certain critical mass, the private schools, nonsectarian and religious, and the local educational authorities will become mutually dependent, the private schools for the voucher money, and the school boards for classroom capacity. Government, since it controls the amount of the vouchers, will have the upper hand.

The Wisconsin court system apparently had deep misgivings about the decision. The high court ruling was 4-2, and it overturned a lower court ruling. Four states have programs similar to Milwaukee's, and those programs, too, are wending their way toward the U.S. Supreme Court.

The separation of church and state has served this country well for more than 200 years. When the high court gets this case, the justices should think long and hard about breaching that wall and heading into the unknown.