Religious Schools supported or rejected under vouchers? Much discussion…http://www.claremont.org/writings/precepts/20020703eastman_meese.htmlhttp://www.heartland.org/Article.cfm?artId=9286“Either religious freedom will be curbed by the state in religious schools if they receive public money, or there will be a danger to civil liberties from a public sanction and subsidy of religious authority. Remember, schooling is required by law of all children. Religious education, wherever it is done, is always a threat to someone’s civil rights if those rights are inconsistent with the religious beliefs or practices. Look at how so many religions have regarded women, free speech, the rights of teachers or students to dissent. There will be serious erosion of the First Amendment if vouchers are permitted,
unless the religious schools are forced to change.In the South today in more than a dozen states private religious schools, mainly Baptist, have sprung up everywhere for millions of white parents who quite deliberately desire to evade racial desegregation. Those schools carefully take in a few selected non-whites, just enough to avoid the charge of racial exclusion, but those schools were clearly designed to avoid the court-ordered desegregation rulings for public schools of the recent past. Unless vouchers take away control over the admission and expulsion practices of private schools, racism and other civil rights violations will be subsidized by taxpayers.
I know that we all like to think that our own faith is a tolerant one, but any religious body that gains or wields political power is dangerous to outsiders to that faith and threatens greater abuse to its own followers because of its increased authority over them that vouchers could provide. Government-subsidized education can promote ethnic and religious intolerance.”
Special Need Students? "Tough!"http://www.ncd.gov/newsroom/publications/vouchers.htmlhttp://www.pfaw.org/pfaw/general/default.aspx?oid=1582•
A 1998 report from the U.S. Department of Education found that 85% of large central city private schools surveyed by the U.S. Department of Education would "definitely or probably" not be willing to participate in a voucher program if they were required to accept "students with special needs such as learning disabilities, limited English proficiency, or low achievement."2
• This is corroborated by experiences with the two largest voucher programs. In Cleveland, where the law does not require private schools to accept handicapped students or provide special education,3 voucher school operator David Brennan candidly wrote to Gov. Voinovich that "Numerous scholarship (voucher) recipients were discouraged from taking their scholarships to private schools with the full knowledge that none of the existing private schools will be able to handle a seriously handicapped child." An Ohio Department of Education spokeswoman recently commented that the voucher office didn't expressly discourage applications, but did inform parents that needed services may be unavailable. "Many Catholic schools are not equipped to handle handicapped children or do not offer the services they need," she said.4
• In Milwaukee, the Legislative Audit Bureau's February 2000 audit of the voucher program notes that seven schools-just 8%-reported that they offered special education services.5 Elsewhere the LAB audit noted that the services most likely available are such lower cost services as those for children with speech, language or learning disabilities.6 This prompted the Department of Public Instruction to respond that
"This means, in effect, that students with certain disabilities are denied a meaningful alternative to the Milwaukee Public Schools despite the intention of the Choice program to provide this opportunity to all eligible low-income children in the city."7 The audit found 171 voucher students who had been identified by the Milwaukee Public School district as having special education needs. "However," it noted, "the total of special needs pupils in the program is not known because participating schools are not required to identify and report pupils in need of special services or their levels of need."
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Many Milwaukee voucher schools are forthright regarding their inability to accommodate students with special needs.8 For example, Harambee Community School states that it is "unable to service children with a learning disability, physical disability and emotionally disturbed" [sic].9 Emmaus Lutheran states that it cannot serve "CD [Cognitive Disabilities], LD [Learning Disabilities], ED [Emotional Disturbances], [and s]ome types of physically handicapped students."10 Gospel Lutheran "cannot serve wheelchair-bound students."11 Blessed Sacrament writes "We believe that students who are 2-3 years below grade level cannot be realistically brought up to grade level because we do not have a tutorial/learning center to accommodate their needs.
Students who have severe emotional or behavioral problems need specific programs to assist them - we do not have a counselor or social worker."12
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In 2001, Wisconsin State Senator Russ Decker (D-Schofield) filed a motion that would have required all Milwaukee private schools participating in the voucher program "to comply with the same statutory requirements as public or charter schools with regard to including pupils with disabilities in statewide and local educational agency-wide assessments…" as well as comply with open records and anti-discrimination laws applicable to public schools. That motion failed to get out of the state's Joint Finance Committee, which makes recommendations on the budget, on a party-line vote.13
• Shortly after this motion failed to get out of the Committee, State Senate Democrats incorporated an anti-discrimination bill authored by Rep. Christine Sinicki into their budget package.
If passed, these provisions would have required all schools funded with taxpayer dollars to follow the state's Open Records and Open Meetings Acts and to comply with statutes barring discrimination based on physical, mental, emotional or learning disability, race, gender, disability, religion, national origin, sexual orientation and more.14 "There is plenty of anecdotal evidence from parents whose children were turned away from private schools because they required special education," said Rep. Sinicki. Sinicki's provisions were omitted from the final budget package that was passed by the legislature.15
• In Florida, Gov. Jeb Bush's A+ Plan voucher program has no requirement that students with special needs be accommodated in participating private schools.16 Under the separate, new program providing vouchers for students with disabilities, parents may opt to use a state voucher to place their child in a private school.
Participating private schools, however, are not required to accommodate all applicants, nor are they required to hire teachers with special education qualifications of any kind, and - unlike private schools in the A+ Plan voucher program - these schools do not have to accept the state voucher as full payment of tuition, leaving no option for parents who are unable to pay the difference.17
I'm not just talking out my rear end here, guys...
