After Colorado Christian ruling, why not K-12 vouchers?
Tuesday, August 5, 2008Written by: Uncle Charley
Hurrah for a court that put a stop to institutional discrimination, and to state officials who received the message loud and clear. From last Friday’s Rocky Mountain News report:
Students at Colorado Christian University will get state scholarships under a decision Friday by two Colorado agencies.
State Higher Education Director David Skaggs and Attorney General John Suthers said they will not contest a 10th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling reversing a state decision barring scholarships to students at the Lakewood campus.
The Colorado Commission on Higher Eduction [sic] had determined that CCU is “pervasively sectarian.”
In the July 23 decision, the appeals court held that the state erred in treating CCU differently from other schools that are owned by religious groups, but which were not deemed “pervasively sectarian.”
Both the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals and CCHE made the right choice. However, a serious inconsistency remains. CCHE doles out scholarships for students to attend private, and even sectarian, postsecondary institutions. Yet where are similar opportunities for students in elementary, middle, and high school? Vouchers and private tuition tax credits for K-12 are not allowed under state policy, and are considered anathema in powerful political circles.
Colorado’s big education buzz over the past year-and-a-half has revolved around the alignment of early childhood, K-12, and colleges and universities—embodied in Gov. Ritter’s P-20 Council and his recently enacted CAP4K plan. The emphasis is on “postsecondary and workforce readiness.” The idea is to bring a consistent connection between the different levels of education institutions. We are told that every student in K-12 should be prepared for entry into college, even if he or she ultimately doesn’t choose that option.
Some Colorado students end up attending private and even religious colleges, subsidized in part at state taxpayer’s expense. But no Colorado K-12 student, not even the neediest, can be afforded the same option. The state is unwilling to help enlist the services of private education operators to meet its admirable public education goals, but just for students who have yet to attain a high school diploma.
I’m not sure if it’s exactly discrimination, but something isn’t right with this picture.
August 6th, 2008 at 10:53 am
The earlier voucher statute here in CO ran afoul of the “local control” provision in the state constitution. Future laws would have to navigate that provision as well as the religion clauses.
The recent Colo Christian ruling (from an appellate-level federal court, not a Colorado state court) did not focus much on our state constitution — a separate issue was being contested. To the extent that the religion clauses were mentioned, the 10th Circuit panel relied on an earlier case (”Americans United”) also concerning higher education. Keep in mind that the federal courts have also long distinguished between support for k-12 and for higher education (e.g., the GI Bill).
The state constitution’s two religion clauses, btw, are much more detailed and emphatic than the one in the federal First Amendment:
Colo. Const. art. 9, § 7: “Neither the general assembly, nor any county, city, town, township, school district or other public corporation, shall ever make any appropriation, or pay from any public fund or moneys whatever, anything in aid of any church or sectarian society, or for any sectarian purpose, or to help support or sustain any school, academy, seminary, college, university or other literary or scientific institution, controlled by any church or sectarian denomination whatsoever; nor shall any grant or donation of land, money or other personal property, ever be made by the state, or any such public corporation to any church, or for any sectarian purpose.”
Colo. Const. art. 2, § 4: “….No person shall be required to attend or support any ministry or place of worship, religious sect or denomination against his consent…..”
Finally, the post here seems to assume that vouchers would result in an achievement benefit for recipients. Unfortunately, the extensive research on existing voucher plans offers little if anything to hang that hat on. I know this is a highly contested topic, and there are indeed several studies offering a glimpse of hope that vouchers might provide a small benefit, but a fair, comprehensive, and dispassionate reading of the overall body of research suggests that any such benefit, if it does exist, would be small. See:
General Accounting Office (2001). School Vouchers: Publicly Funded Programs in Cleveland and Milwaukee. Washington DC: GAO.
General Accounting Office (2002). School Vouchers: Characteristics of Privately Funded Programs. Washington DC: GAO.
Gill, B. P., Timpane, P. M., Ross, K. E., Brewer, D. J., and Booker, K. (2007). Rhetoric vs. reality: What we know and what we need to know about vouchers and charter schools. Santa Monica, CA: RAND.