SPOTLIGHT: ASK THE EXPERTS

“This was the Super Bowl for school choice and the kids won,” said Clint Bolick, vice president for the Institute for Justice.

“This decision makes good on the promise made nearly 50 years ago in Brown v. Board of Education,” said Clint Bolick, vice president with the Washington, D.C.-based Institute for Justice, the nation’s leading legal advocate for school choice. The Institute for Justice represents low-income parents from Cleveland receiving scholarships from the program. “It marks a new beginning for children all across America who desperately need educational opportunities. Those who were once educationally disenfranchised and forgotten have just gained a voice that the educational establishment can no longer afford to ignore. Poor parents will finally have a choice in how and where their children are educated. This can only mean good things for them, for their children and ultimately for our country’s K-12 public and private schools,” Bolick said.

The National Education Association pledges to continue to fight for children and public education - and oppose divisive and counterproductive proposals to divert energy, attention, and resources to private school tuition vouchers, despite the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in Zelman v. Simmons-Harris, the Cleveland private school voucher case. Just because vouchers may be legal in some circumstances doesn't make them a good idea. [...]

Vouchers are a divisive and expensive diversion from continuing progress in these areas.

Make no mistake, vouchers are not reform. If policymakers want to act on the issues that parents care most about - the kitchen table discussions about education opportunity for their children - they will address teacher quality, class size, making sure all schools have high expectations for every child, and providing the resources to help students succeed.

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) said today the Supreme Court decision upholding the use of taxpayer-paid school vouchers to send children to private schools will eventually leave public schools systems in dire straits. Kweisi Mfume, NAACP President & CEO, said: "The congress and state legislatures should act immediately to counteract the court's decision. The NAACP opposes the use of taxpayer dollars to pay for school vouchers because it will mean fewer dollars for public schools where most Americans are educated. School voucher programs siphon scarce tax money away from struggling public schools. Education must be a fundamental guarantee for each child.

With its June 27 ruling that tuition vouchers for private and religious schools do not violate the First Amendment's establishment clause, the Supreme Court has put the school choice debate back where it belongs: in the political arena.1 This is a welcome development because the basic problems with vouchers have little to do with church-state issues; rather, they raise organizational questions about American public education that should be decided through a political rather than legal process. PPI has long advocated enhanced public school choice, public charter schools, and other public choice options, but at the same time has opposed using public monies to fund vouchers for schools that operate without public accountability and admissions.2 Consistent with that history, this policy brief describes the principles that policy-makers must incorporate into any choice proposal in the wake of the Zelman v. Simmons-Harris decision to formulate a Third Way that expands choice only while guaranteeing access, quality, and standards in public education. Under this "accountable choice" model, public accountability, as well as funding, follows students into new or existing schools of choice -- whether operated by government, private, or parochial authorities. But, these schools remain public in the most critical sense -- public results and accountability in exchange for public funding.