No Public Funds to Private Schools

In the guise of helping to improve education, a major effort is underway throughout the country to replace our system of public schools with voucher systems that would transfer scarce tax dollars to private schools, which are selectively available only to some children. Voucher bills have been introduced in the Delaware legislature in past years and are likely to reappear during the 139th General Assembly. DSEA opposes such legislation.

DSEA believes that the nation's efforts should be devoted to the support and improvement of the public school system. Local, state, and federal funds for education should be appropriated only for public schools that are publicly controlled. DSEAs official position regarding vouchers is expressed in Resolution A-12:

The Delaware State Education Association believes that voucher plans or funding formulas that have the same effect as vouchers--under which education is financed by federal, state, or local grants to parents, schools, or school systems--could lead to racial, economic, and social isolation of students and weaken or destroy the public school system in Delaware.

DSEA is committed to the concept of an adequately funded, free, quality public education system. DSEA believes that vouchers are unsound fiscally, unsound as a matter of public policy, and unsound constitutionally. Statements of facts about vouchers are as follows:

Vouchers would drain resources from public schools and do nothing to enhance parental involvement, improve discipline or safety, or further high academic standards.

Vouchers would decrease public accountability for the use of tax dollars. At a time when we are seeking more accountability in education, there is no justification for giving public aid to school that are not accountable to the public. Private schools could use taxpayer funds for anything from religious education to indoor swimming pools without voters having any say. Vouchers are not real choice. They actually put choice in the hands of private school administrators, not parents. Private schools generally reserve the right to refuse students on the basis of income, academic achievement, disability, or discipline problems. With no guarantee of acceptance, vouchers are tickets to nowhere.

A voucher system would increase the costs of education, and the taxes to pay for education, by adding costs for administering the program, subsidizing affluent parents who already pay tuition at private and religious schools, and leaving students who need the most high-cost services behind.

Vouchers and tuition tax credit initiatives or referendums have been rejected 19 times by voters in 14 states since 1966. Not a single statewide voucher proposal has passed.

Vouchers are an unconstitutional means of channeling public money to private schools for religious instruction. In the latest court ruling on this issue, Milwaukees effort to expand its school choice program and send poor children to religious schools at taxpayers expense was prohibited. About 90 percent of all private school students attend religious schools, making any voucher system very likely to cross the boundary of separation of church and state.

Vouchers would not expand opportunity for low- and middle-income families and could lead to greater educational, racial, and social stratification. Vouchers would make a tiny adjustment in the allocation of educational opportunity for a very small number of children and still condemn a large number of children to inadequately funded schools. A select few low-income families might benefit from voucher plans, but most poor children would still go to public schools, and these schools would have fewer resources because taxpayer's money would be going to private schools.

A voucher system is likely to get more expensive over time as private schools raise tuition in response to government subsidies. A 1992 survey by the Southwest Regional Laboratory found that 40 percent of the schools that would accept voucher students would increase their tuition rates if they accepted voucher students.

Vouchers write off public schools and lead to throwaway children. All the previous points lead to this conclusion. Vouchers would subsidize the private school education of many middle- and upper-income students and leave to the public schools the task of educating all those who cannot qualify for, and cannot afford, many private schools. In the long run, abandoning public education by the use of vouchers will only increase inequities.

DSEA Proposal:

Provide no public fund appropriations in any form to non public schools, for-profit schools, or to the parents of students who attend these schools. Instead, fund public schools adequately and resist all efforts to weaken them.