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U.S. Supreme Court is considering oral arguments it heard yesterday
on the constitutionality of Cleveland's school voucher program.
As the nine justices deliberate, they should repeat this simple
mantra: "School vouchers are just Pell Grants for kids."
Opponents of
Cleveland's program — which gives some 4,200 low-income students
up to $2,250 to help attend whatever schools they want — argue
that it violates the separation of church and state, since most
of the initiative's beneficiaries and their parents have chosen
to use their vouchers at Catholic schools. As it happens, Catholic
campuses were ready, willing, and able to accept these voucher-funded
students. Others, admittedly fewer, have taken their vouchers elsewhere.
This is the definition of school choice.
If these vouchers
unconstitutionally entangle church and state, then so do Pell Grants.
This popular voucher program gives up to $3,300 in federal money
to help students attend colleges and universities that they and
their parents choose. As Joshua Hall, director of Educational Policy
at the free-market Buckeye Institute in Columbus, Ohio, explained
to me, Pell Grants can purchase course credits at government-run
institutions such as Ohio State University. They also may be used
at private, secular schools — such as Case Western Reserve
University — and even the Methodists' Baldwin-Wallace College
and the Jesuits' John Carroll University. Oddly enough, People for
the American Way is not tying its knickers in knots to keep Pell
Grants away from college students at these private schools, all
in or near Cleveland.
And just listen
to what Hillary Clinton told the 1996 California Democratic party
convention: "We also need to increase the number and maximum
award of Pell Grants."
Defenders of
the dreadful educational status quo quickly reply that college kids
are old enough to decide whether they want God as their study partner.
So, then, why do anti-voucher liberals support the $4.8 billion
Child Care and Development Block Grant program? CCDBG provides federal
funds for day care. CCDBG vouchers can be used at government-run
child care facilities, at private, non-sectarian establishments
and even at day-care centers run by religious institutions. The
pre-school at the Rev. Floyd Flake's Allen AME Church in Queens,
New York accepts CCDBG vouchers. Its federally funded three- to
five-year-old students actually memorize verses of the Holy Bible!
Indeed, Section
658 P of the federal Child Care and Development Fund law explicitly
states: "Nothing in this subchapter shall preclude the use
of such certificates for sectarian child care services if freely
chosen by the parent." Where is the outrage?
In fact, rather
than denounce this program — which allows taxpayer dollars
to flow from Washington to parents into the pockets of priests and
ministers — liberals want even more CCDBG money.
"The President
has made a string of decisions with disturbing consequences for
millions of children," Rep. Dick Gephardt (D., Mo.) said at
a press conference last March 21. Gephardt complained that President
Bush's FY 2002 budget "reduces resources for existing Child
Care Development Block Grant (CCDBG) projects by $285 million."
On April 3,
2001, Sen. Christopher Dodd (D., Conn.) asked reporters, "which
children are they going to leave behind, when 60,000 families —
60,000 kids — will lose the needed support under the Child
Care Development Block Grant?"
Just last January
30, the left-wing Children's Defense Fund released a statement which
declared that President Bush "should put considerable investment
in the Child Care and Development Block Grant this year so that
two million more children in working families can have quality,
affordable, safe child care and enter school ready to learn and
succeed."
The anti-voucher
crowd clicks its church-state angst on and off like a flashlight.
Federal vouchers for church-based educational services? "We
want more!" for preschoolers. However, they're "pure evil"
for kids in kindergarten through high school. But "give us
more!" for college students.
If day-care
workers and university professors joined the National Educational
Association in droves, the position of anti-voucher politicians
beholden to the NEA finally might develop some consistency. As it
is, this hodgepodge reveals the moral Chapter 11 status of those
who gleefully relegate young black kids in Cleveland and beyond
to the back of the opportunity bus.
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