Tax Credits and Private Schools

There can be few areas of public policy as muddled as that of government aid to non-government schools, and perhaps only an unwary person in public life will venture too far into the field.

I wonder if others have been struck, as I have been, by the contradictions of public policy in this area. For a generation now, from the time the Supreme Court called for severe restraints on public assistance to non-public schools, various levels of government have both imposed these restraints and fairly excelled themselves in devising ways, small or even symbolic, to get around them. One would say there is a considerable disjunction between what we say and what we do in this field, save that the whole business is so muddled as to preclude the very thought of anything being distinct.

DM

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Daniel Patrick Moynihan

There can be few areas of public policy as muddled as that of government aid to non-government schools, and perhaps only an unwary person in public life will venture too far into the field.

I wonder if others have been struck, as I have been, by the contradictions of public policy in this area. For a generation now, from the time the Supreme Court called for severe restraints on public assistance to non-public schools, various levels of government have both imposed these restraints and fairly excelled themselves in devising ways, small or even symbolic, to get around them. One would say there is a considerable disjunction between what we say and what we do in this field, save that the whole business is so muddled as to preclude the very thought of anything being distinct.