School Choice and Government Regulation of Private Schools
by Bret Schundler
Mayor of Jersey City
Humanism, the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled, is a religion. In teaching solely from a Humanist perspective, our monopoly approach to public education violates the Constitution's separation of church and state.
The only way to publicly fund education without violating the First Amendment is to empower parents to choose their children's schools, and then to have the public funds which are committed to the education of a child follow him or her to the school so chosen.
Some Conservatives worry that school choice programs, while re-establishing freedom of religion, may also entangle government in the religious affairs of privately-managed, religious schools. This is a concern which merits vigilance, but which can be effectively guarded against.
For instance, one way to implement school choice without providing a basis for government interference to make clear the dollars being spent are the people's, not the government's. This is a point that should be explicitly stated in school choice legislation. It should also be a focus of any school choice program's design.
Here in New Jersey, we could establish a 25% state tuition tax credit, up to $500 per dependent child per year, for education-related tuition expenses. The fact that the government provides parents with a tax credit to educate their children would not give government any basis for increasing the regulation of private schools. Minnesota has had a tuition-tax credit program in place for decades, and it has never led to increased private school regulation.
To ensure that school choice dollars are also available for the children of low-income parents who, because they pay little in income taxes, may not be able to benefit from a tax credit, the State could also provide a 50% tax credit for contributions to any foundation which makes scholarships available to low-income New Jersey children. Combined with the federal tax deduction which contributions to scholarship foundations already qualify for, the net cost to a wealthy contributor who funded a low-income child's $1,000 scholarship could be as little as $100. And the fact that a foundation gives a child a scholarship would, once again, give the government no basis for regulating such schools.
These two tax credit ideas would make school choice affordable for poor and middle-income parents without using public funds. But that said, the U. S. Supreme Court, in its Lemon V. Kurtzman decision, explicitly ruled that the government can constitutionally give public funds to parents for the private education of their children if it observes certain guidelines. For a publicly-funded school choice program to be constitutional, the Court ruled it must meet three tests. First, the money must be appropriated for a secular public purpose: for example, the education of children. Second, the government itself cannot direct funds to a religious school, but must direct the funds to parents, who are then constitutionally free to use those funds at a religious school if they so choose. Third, the government cannot excessively entangle itself in the workings of the religious school.
Taken together, these three prongs of the "Lemon Test," as they are known, establish that government can publicly fund school vouchers, but cannot excessively entangle itself in the regulation of religious schools. This gives those of us who support school choice, but who do not want government regulation to follow government money, an additional protection against excessive regulation -- the protection of the United States' Constitution.
That said, the Constitution is but a piece of paper. It may permit a publicly-funded voucher program, and it may prohibit the government from subsequently interfering with religiously-affiliated schools, but it is still up to the people to defend the Constitution and to preserve its principles as the fundamental law of our nation.
This gets to the true heart of this matter. The real threat to the freedom of our religious schools is not the risk that a government which publicly funds school vouchers may seek to regulate them, but the threat that government may seek to regulate them whether they receive public funds or not.
During the 1980s, an effort was made in Congress to begin regulating home-schoolers. That interest was motivated not by the fact that home-schoolers receive public funds (they do not), but by the quite elementary fact that power tends to seek more power. Ask any businessman and they will tell you that they are at constant risk of increased regulation, not because they receive public funds (which typically they do not), but because government constantly seeks to expand its reach, power, and control, regardless.
The only true bulwark against tyranny is a vigilant citizenry committed to the preservation of its liberties. School choice programs, especially those which rely on tax credits, support the development of such a citizenry. They do this by increasing the number of Americans who are educated in privately-managed, religious schools which teach children that our fundamental rights do not come from the government -- they come from God.
In communities like Jersey City, many privately-managed religious schools are closing down. They are closing because lower-income residents cannot afford -- after paying high taxes -- to also pay tuition costs, even though the tuition these inner-city, privately-managed schools charge is but a fraction of what is spent per child in our inner-city government schools.
Ultimately, we need to implement school choice not only so that parents can have their First Amendment rights to guide the religious instruction of their children respected, but so that our children can be brought-up properly appreciative of the liberties which God has given them, and which no government can justly take away.
It is only this abiding knowledge, nothing else, which will preserve freedom from generation to generation. We need school choice now!
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Hudson County, New Jersey is a place of many firsts - including genocide and slavery.
Political corruption is a tradition here.
First in a series by Anthony Olszewski – Click HERE to find out more.
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