EDITORIAL: A victory for the children

Ruling clears way for genuine school choice

Thursday's 5-4 U.S. Supreme Court decision upholding Cleveland's school voucher program may be the most important ruling from the high court in years ... and offers hope that children whose aspirations have been dashed by the nation's hidebound education bureaucracy might at last dare to dream of a brighter future.

The majority's forceful decision clears the way for the development of meaningful school choice programs in other states -- particularly Nevada, whose students would greatly benefit from a competitive schooling environment.

Cleveland's program, established in 1995, offered vouchers, or "scholarships," to several thousand low-income parents, letting them transfer their children to any public or private school in the district that would accept them. The payments amounted to much less than the average per-pupil spending in the district, and parents qualified to receive more money if they placed their children in another public school rather than a private school.

Even so, critics of the program claimed that it constituted an establishment of religion, serving as a direct subsidy of sectarian schools. Writing for the majority, Chief Justice William Rehnquist said this was nonsense: "The program here in fact creates financial disincentives for religious schools. ... Parents that choose to participate in the scholarship program and then enroll their children in a private school -- religious or nonreligious -- must co-pay a portion of the school's tuition. Families that choose a community school, magnet school or traditional public school pay nothing."

In dissent, Justice John Paul Stevens called the majority's ruling "profoundly misguided. ... Whenever we remove a brick from the wall that was designed to separate religion and government, we increase the risk of religious strife and the foundation of our democracy."

This is hyperbole, bordering on hysteria. If the Cleveland voucher program promotes religion, than so do the G.I. Bill and Pell grants. The reason such programs are consistent with the Constitution, the majority clearly stated, is that they are neutral. Parents and students can choose to spend the money as they see fit.

In a separate concurring opinion, Justice Clarence Thomas quoted Frederick Douglass: "Education means emancipation. It means light and liberty. It means the uplifting of the soul of man into the glorious light of truth, the light by which men can only be made free."

The Supreme Court has cleared the way for this process of emancipation to begin. Now it's the duty of elected officials to provide parents with the means to free their children from failing public schools.

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