The NEA (National Education Association) asserts that school vouchers will do just that. (1) Very specifically, the organization states that schools which do not fall under the heading of being a public school, such as a private or religious school, are not as protected by civil rights laws. Taking this assertion one step further, the NEA believes that if public money in the form of vouchers is given to these private and religious schools, sectarian purposes are actually furthered in direct violation of the Constitution. Unfortunately, the NEA has missed the Constitutional Boat, especially considering the fact that the United States Supreme Court has already ruled school vouchers to be entirely in harmony with the Constitution. (2)
School vouchers are nothing new. They have been in the news and on the desks of legislators for years and years, but so far there has been a distinct objection by the very influential organizations, such as the NEA, which have managed to stymie many a bill permitting parents to use these vouchers. The idea is for parents to be given school vouchers that permit them to redeem these vouchers for some or all of the tuition that their kids would be charged at a private school. This effectively returns tax monies to those who paid into the “pot” - the parents – rather than automatically and irrevocably sending them to the government-run school system. The parents will then be able to choose if they do want to send their children to private or public schools. As it stands, parents who decline to send their children to failing public schools will have to pay twice for their child’s education: once with their taxes which go automatically to a government-run school, and once with their own money that will need to be used to pay the child’s tuition at a private institution of learning.
This seems hardly fair, because parents are not given a choice to remove their children from a school that hardly meets the criteria of the school district, and which may not only be failing, but in many ways hazardous to their children’s upbringing. Instead, the children of those families who cannot afford to fund their own education are forced to endure an education that is scholarly inferior, physically quite possibly dangerous, and overall a self-perpetuating disaster. So what is the answer? While school vouchers are the answer for many, at this point in time only a few areas have taken to implementing this option, and for everyone else, the double payment for education is the only way to go. As for the NEA’s stand on the threat to civil rights protection and constitutionality – all we can say is that it has been asked and answered.
(1) http://www.nea.org/lac/vouchers/vouchposition.html
(2) http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=US&vol=000&invol=00-1751#Scene_1
