In 2002, when the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the Cleveland school voucher program in a decision that President Bush called a "landmark ruling" for parents, many voucher supporters thought a clear victory had been won. The road, however, has been much rockier, with negative court rulings, dueling research reports and continued debate about church-state constitutionality and adequate support for public schools.

Republican legislators are pushing the issue with a national voucher proposal, but at the same time, the issue is being argued state by state, program by program, depending in part on the exact wording of each state constitution. When vouchers are an option, many parents head straight for religious schools – often Christian, but also increasingly Muslim.

What’s new

• On July 18, 2006, Republicans proposed a $100 million national school voucher program that would let low-income children in underperforming schools move to a different public school or a private school, including religious ones.
• Research studies evaluating the quality of private, public and religious education continue to accumulate. Voucher critics say the latest, the U.S. government report "Comparing Private Schools and Public Schools Using Hierarchical Linear Modeling," released on July 14, 2006, shows that private schools are not significantly outperforming public schools, while U.S. Education Secretary Margaret Spellings discounted the study. The study examines math and reading scores of private and public school students.
• On Jan. 4, 2006, the Florida Supreme Court ruled 5-2 to scuttle a voucher program that the court ruled violated the state constitution by shifting money from public education to the support of private and religious schools. In May, the state Senate failed to pass a proposed constitutional amendment that would have restored the voucher program. Twenty-four votes were needed to put the amendment on the November ballot; it got 23.
• In September 2005, after Hurricane Katrina slammed the Gulf Coast, President Bush signed a law that allowed displaced students to use vouchers at public and private schools around the country. Catholic schools, in particular, opened their doors throughout the nation.
• Maine’s law banning state funding of religious schools has twice been upheld by the state Supreme Court. On July 25, 2006, the Institute for Justice appealed the law on behalf of eight families to the U.S. Supreme Court. Read a July 26, 2006, Associated Press story posted at MaineToday.com.
• The federal No Child Left Behind Act faces its first reauthorization in 2007. Some say a national school voucher plan could be included in it.

Why it matters

The issues at the heart of the voucher debate also impact other aspects of government funding. Should government money help finance religious education? Are religious schools better than public schools? Should private and religious schools receive government support, even if it’s at the expense of public schools? Should taxpaying parents have the right to direct where those taxes are spent – in religious or secular schools?

Jump to background

National sources

See ReligionLink’s Guide to Church-State Experts and Organizations for more sources.
• Ira Lupu is F. Elwood and Eleanor Davis Professor of Law at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. He is also co-director of the Project on Law and Religious Institutions and the Legal Tracking Project for the Roundtable on Religion and Social Welfare Policy, a part of the Nelson A. Rockefeller Institute of Government. The Roundtable posts a resource page on school vouchers with legal analysis. Contact 202-994-7053, iclupu@law.gwu.edu.  

FOR VOUCHERS
• U.S. Education Secretary Margaret Spellings supports the use of school vouchers for private and religious education. Contact 202-401-3000.
• Jeanne Allen is president of the Center for Education Reform in Washington, D.C., which favors charter schools and voucher programs to provide options for students from low-performing schools. The center argues that "school choice is equitable, it’s wanted and it works." Contact 202-822-9000 or 800-521-2118, cer@edreform.com.
• Lisa Knepper is communications director for the Institute for Justice, a public interest law firm in Arlington, Va. It has been involved in court cases around the country involving school vouchers. Contact 703-682-9320 ext. 202, lknepper@ij.org.
• Clint Bolick is president and general counsel of the Alliance for School Choice, an organization in Phoenix that works to provide more educational opportunities for disadvantaged students. Contact through communications director Laura Devany, 602-468-0900, ldevany@allianceforschoolchoice.org.
• Robert C. Enlow is executive director of the Milton & Rose D. Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice in Indianapolis. It has sponsored research on school choice issues, including vouchers. Contact 317-681-0745, rcenlow@friedmanfoundation.org.
• Leon Tucker is communications director for the Black Alliance for Educational Options, a national nonprofit group based in Washington, D.C. The alliance works to support parental choice and increase quality educational options for African-American students. Contact 813-425-2093, leon@baeo.org.  

AGAINST VOUCHERS
• Reg Weaver, president of the National Education Association, based in Washington, D.C., contends that voters generally oppose vouchers and that money spent on vouchers should be spent to improve public education. See its extensive voucher page. Contact Miguel Gonzalez, 202-822-7200, Mgonzalez@nea.org.
• Ralph G. Neas, president of People for the American Way, spoke out against the Katrina school voucher legislation. Read his statement. PFAW, in Washington, D.C., has consistently opposed vouchers, saying they siphon away support for the public schools. Contact 202-467-4999, media@pfaw.org.
• Marc Egan is director of federal affairs at the National School Boards Association in Alexandria, Va. The association argues that vouchers drain resources from public schools and that private schools can decide which students to accept or reject and lack accountability. Read an NSBA briefing paper on vouchers that analyzes what to expect from Congress on vouchers in 2006. Contact 703-838-6707, megan@nsba.org.
• Andrew J. Coulson is director of the Center for Educational Freedom at the Cato Institute, a public policy research foundation in Washington, D.C. Read a Jan. 9, 2006, opinion piece he wrote for The Wall Street Journal about the Florida voucher decision. Contact 202-789-5200, acoulson@cato.org.
• Americans United for Separation of Church and State, based in Washington, D.C., contends that vouchers force taxpayers to pay for religious instruction at private schools. Read analysis from the organization on vouchers, including a brochure titled "Should You Pay Taxes to Support Religious Schools?" Contact Joe Conn, director of communications, 202-466-3234, conn@au.org.  

RELIGIOUS GROUPS
• The Rev. William F. Davis is deputy secretary for schools with the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, based in Washington, D.C. Davis has argued that Catholic schools are second to none in their ability to serve all children – including disadvantaged children. Read the transcript of remarks he made at a May 19, 2000, conference sponsored by the Faith and Reason Institute, on the question of "Are Vouchers Good for Catholic Education?" Contact 202-541-3132, bdavis@nccbuscc.org.
• Richard Land is president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission. In friend-of-the-court briefs, the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission has argued for including religious schools in school choice programs. Contact Kerry Bural, 615-782-8419, kbural@erlc.com.
• K. Hollyn Hollman is general counsel for the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty, based in Washington, D.C. The committee contends that using vouchers at private, religiously affiliated schools amounts to government support of religion and violates the consciences of taxpayers who disagree with what those schools teach. Contact through Jeff Huett, director of communications, 202-544-4226, jhuett@bjconline.org. Read a Q-and-A backgrounder from the Baptist committee on school vouchers. The committee filed an amicus brief (along with several Jewish groups) in the case decided by the Florida Supreme Court.
• Jeffrey Sinensky is general counsel for the American Jewish Committee, based in New York, which was part of a coalition challenging the Florida voucher program. Contact through Kenneth Bandler, communications director, 202-785-4200, bandlerk@ajc.org.
• The Council on American-Islamic Relations, based in Washington, D.C., works to protect the civil rights of Muslims and tracks public policy issues. Contact communications director Ibrahim Hooper, 202-488-8787 or 202-744-7726, ihooper@cair-net.org.

Background

NATIONAL VOUCHER PROPOSAL
• On July 18, 2006, the Bush administration and Republican legislators proposed a $100 million national voucher plan that would allow low-income students to transfer to private schools from low-performing public schools. Read a July 19, 2006, Washington Post story. Read an article by Eschoolnews online.  

THE FLORIDA DECISION
• On Jan. 4, 2006, the Florida Supreme Court struck down a school voucher plan in the state, saying that the program was unconstitutional and that it channeled tax dollars into "separate private systems parallel to and in competition with the free public schools." The court said the voucher program violated a section of the Florida Constitution that states: "Adequate provision shall be made by law for a uniform, efficient, safe, secure and high-quality system of free public schools." Both supporters and critics agree that the Florida Supreme Court ruling can’t be appealed because no federal issues are involved.
• Two other larger Florida voucher plans – one for disabled students and one that gave tax credits to businesses providing money to a scholarship fund to send students from low-income families to private schools – were not immediately affected by the 5-2 ruling, although its language could have implications for them down the road.
• Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, a Republican, established the Florida voucher program, called Opportunity Scholarships, in 1999, as a central piece of his education reform effort. It was the first statewide voucher system and allowed 733 students from low-performing public schools – most of them black and Hispanic children – to attend private schools with vouchers, at a cost of $3 million a year.
• Read about the Florida Supreme Court ruling in a Jan. 5, 2006, USA Today story, a story the same day in The New York Times, and a Jan. 13, 2006, story from the Christian Science Monitor.

KATRINA
• In December 2005, President Bush signed a law giving students displaced by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita access to $1.6 million in emergency federal aid they could use during the current school year to attend schools in cities where they’d relocated. The students could use the funds to attend private and religious schools.
• Read the government’s June 12, 2006, update on its "Hurricane Help for Schools" program. Private schools and religious schools are eligible for aid.
• Read the transcript of a Feb. 10, 2006, story from Religion & Ethics Newsweekly about the controversy over faith-based funding involved in the recovery effort after Hurricane Katrina. In New Orleans and elsewhere, Catholic schools have opened their doors to students displaced by Katrina, and are eligible to receive voucher payments from the government.
• Read an extended interview from the program with K. Hollyn Hollman, general counsel for the Baptists Joint Committee for Religious Liberty.
• Read a Sept. 25, 2005, Catholic News Service story, a Sept. 21, 2005, USA Today story and a Sept. 21, 2005, Washington Post story about the Katrina voucher program.

OTHER STATES
• The school voucher issue is boiling in states around the country – and at least a dozen other states have the kind of "uniformity clause" at issue in the Florida case, experts say.
• Read a Nov. 7, 2005, story from the National Journal’s CongressDaily and a May 5, 2005, story from Stateline.org summarizing voucher programs in the states.
• Read a series of articles published in June 2005 in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel chronicling 15 years of vouchers in Milwaukee. More than two-thirds of participating students attended religious schools, including Catholic and Lutheran schools and more than 20 all-black Christian schools.
• On June 28, 2004, the Colorado Supreme Court struck down a voucher program in the state, ruling 4-3 that it violated a provision of the Colorado Constitution requiring local school districts to "have control of instruction in the public schools of their respective districts."

U.S. SUPREME COURT
• In 1996, the Ohio Legislature adopted a voucher program for the Cleveland schools – a response to years of dissatisfaction with the educational performance of the city’s public schools. The program gave students scholarships that could be used at private, parochial or other alternative schools.
• On June 27, 2002, the U.S. Supreme Court in the Zelman v. Simmons-Harris case upheld the Cleveland voucher plan. The court ruled 5-4 that the plan did not violate the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, which states that Congress shall make no law establishing a religion. The court held that the vouchers were intended for the secular purpose of helping children from low-income families attending failing schools – and that any decision to spend the scholarships at religious schools was the result of the private decisions of individual families.
• Read a June 27, 2002, story from CNN.com on the Supreme Court decision and a June 3, 2002, ReligionLink issue on the Cleveland case.
• More than 99 percent of the students receiving vouchers in Cleveland attend religious schools. Read the transcript of a Feb. 15, 2002, Religion & Ethics Newsweekly program about the Cleveland voucher program and the involvement of religious schools.
• Read the transcript of a November 2001 panel discussion on the Cleveland voucher case sponsored by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life.

POLLS
• Read the results of the 2005 Phi Delta Kappa/Gallup Poll on education showing that 57 percent opposed allowing students and parents to choose a private school to attend at public expense.
• Read the results of an October 2004 ABC News/Washington Post poll showing that 4 in 10 registered voters support vouchers, but that support erodes if supporting vouchers means less money for public schools.
• Read the results of a March 2001 Harris Poll showing that more Republicans than Democrats favor school vouchers.

ARTICLES
• A New Jersey lawsuit seeking to enact school vouchers for kids in under-performing schools has attracted millions of dollars from conservative organizations across the country, according to a July 24, 2006, story at NewJersey.com.
• Read a July 19, 2006, Associated Press story about the Republican proposal for a national voucher plan. It’s posted by CNN.com.
• Listen to a Jan. 16, 2006, story from National Public Radio’s Morning Edition about the Florida Supreme Court ruling and the difficulties the voucher movement faces.
• Listen to a June 7, 2005, NPR story on the implications the Florida case has for other states with school voucher programs.
• Read a June 13, 2005, Washington Post story about the way vouchers are reinvigorating Catholic schools in the District of Columbia.
• Read a July 8, 2002, commentary from Slate.com and a July 2, 2002, story from Beliefnet.com that examine the potential impact of vouchers on Muslim schools.  

Regional sources

IN THE NORTHEAST
• Paul Peterson is Henry Lee Shattuck Professor of Government at Harvard University in Boston and director of the university’s Program on Education Policy and Governance. He supports vouchers and has argued that they have improved the test scores of African-American children from the inner city (although some dispute that). Peterson is editor in chief of Education Next, a journal on education policy. He also edited The Future of School Choice (Hoover Institution Press, 2003) and co-authored The Education Gap: Vouchers and Urban Schools (Brookings Institution Press, 2002). Contact 617-495-8312, ppeterso@gov.harvard.edu.
• Charles L. Glenn is professor and chairman of administration, training and policy at the Boston University School of Education. He has written about the history of "common schools" and attitudes toward the idea of private and religious schools being involved in shaping students’ ideas and characters. He is the author of The Ambiguous Embrace: Government and Faith-Based Schools and Social Agencies (Princeton University Press, 2000), as well as a three-volume study on how 40 nations balance educational freedom with accountability. Contact glennsed@bu.edu.
• Kenneth K. Wong holds the Walter and Leonore Annenberg Chair in Education Policy at Brown University in Providence, R.I. He also is director of the school’s Urban Education Policy Program and was the founding director in 2004 and 2005 of the National Research Center on School Choice, Competition and Student Achievement. Contact 401-863-1486, Kenneth_wong@brown.edu.  

IN THE EAST
• Robert A. Destro is a law professor and director of the Interdisciplinary Program on Law and Religion at Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. He wrote an amicus brief for the Center for Education Reform in favor of the constitutionality of the Cleveland voucher program and represented the governor of Wisconsin and others in voucher litigation in Wisconsin. Destro says the voucher debate is about control of publicly financed education – including what role religion should play – and the roots of the debate go back to the early 1800s. Contact 202-319-5202, destro@law.cua.edu.
• Joseph P. Viteritti is a public policy professor at Hunter College at City University of New York. He is the author of Choosing Equality: School Choice, the Constitution and Civil Society (Brookings Institution Press, 1999) and gave expert testimony in the Cleveland voucher case. Contact 212-772-5597, joseph.viteritti@hunter.cuny.edu.
• Clive R. Belfield is associate director of the National Center for the Study of Privatization in Education at Teachers College at Columbia University in New York. He also is an assistant professor of economics at Queens College, City University of New York. Belfield is the author of a January 2006 study on the Cleveland voucher program, which concluded that academic performance did not improve for participating students, but religious preference did play a role in which schools they selected. Contact 212-678-3351 or 718-997-5430, Belfield@qc.edu.
• Cecilia Elena Rouse is a professor of economics and public affairs at Princeton University and director of the education research section, which uses research to try to improve the quality of education. She has studied the impact of vouchers on student achievement. Contact 609-258-4042, rouse@princeton.edu.  

IN THE SOUTHEAST
• Mark Pudlow is spokesman for the Florida Education Association, which challenged the Florida voucher program. Contact 850-201-3223 (office) or 850-508-9756 (cell), mark.pudlow@floridaea.org.
• Lawrence Kenny, an economist with the University of Florida at Gainesville, has analyzed the results of studies on vouchers. He argues that other states may have more success with voucher programs despite the Florida ruling and that support builds as people become more comfortable with vouchers. Contact 352-392-0117, larry.Kenny@cba.ufl.edu.
• Laura S. Underkuffler, a law professor at Duke University in Durham, N.C., argues that public funding for religious schools undermines religious tolerance and freedom of conscience. She also has said that some European countries that have provided government funding for religious schools now want to change that policy. Contact 919-613-7085, underkuffler@law.duke.edu.
• James G. Dwyer is a law professor at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Va. He is the author of Vouchers Within Reason: A Child-Centered Approach to Education Reform (Cornell University Press, 2002) and has argued that vouchers offer an opportunity to bring educational accountability to private and religious schools. Contact 757-221-2685, jgdwye@wm.edu.  

IN THE SOUTH
• Jay P. Greene is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, a nonprofit public policy institute in New York, and is endowed chair and head of the department of education reform at the University of Arkansas. He has conducted evaluations of school choice and accountability programs in Florida, Charlotte, Milwaukee, Cleveland, San Antonio and Washington, D.C. Contact 479-575-3172, jpg@uark.edu.
• Mark Berends is director of the National Research and Development Center on School Choice at Vanderbilt University in Nashville. He also is an associate professor of Public Policy and Education and has written extensively about school reform. Contact 615-322-8045, mark.berends@vanderbilt.edu.
• Timothy Hall is a University of Mississippi law professor who can speak about the Establishment and Free Exercise clauses of the First Amendment. Contact 662-915-6847, lwhall@olemiss.edu.  

IN THE MIDWEST
• Amy Hanauer is executive director of Policy Matters Ohio, a nonprofit group in Cleveland that studies public policy issues related to economics. She has analyzed the Cleveland voucher program and concluded in a 2002 report that nearly all the students using vouchers were enrolled in religious schools. Contact 216-931-9922, ahanauer@policymattersohio.org.
• Thomas C. Berg is a law professor at the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota and co-director of the school’s Terrence J. Murphy Institute for Catholic Thought, Law and Public Policy. Berg is the principal drafter of the Joint Statement by Church-State Scholars on School Vouchers and the Constitution, issued by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life after the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in the Cleveland case in 2002. Contact 651-962-4918, tcberg@stthomas.edu.
• Thomas Pedroni is an assistant professor in the department of teacher development and educational studies at Oakland University in Rochester, Mich. He has studied the involvement of African-American and Latino parents in supporting voucher programs. Contact 248-370-2159, pedroni@oakland.edu.
• Christopher Lubienski is assistant professor of educational organization and leadership at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His research has found that, when demographic differences are accounted for, public school students do better than those in private, charter and religious schools on math – and that religion does not play a big role in the research discussion on how vouchers are working. Read a Jan. 28, 2006, New York Times story. Contact 217-333-4382, club@uiuc.edu.  

IN THE SOUTHWEST
• Alex Molnar is a professor of educational leadership and policy studies at Arizona State University and director of the school’s Education Policy Studies Laboratory. He argues that vouchers are bad public policy and a danger to the separation of church and state. Molnar is the author of Vouchers, Class Size Reduction and Student Achievement: Considering the Evidence (Phi Delta Kappa, 2000) and editor of School Reform Proposals: The Research Evidence (Information Age Publishing, 2002). Contact 480-965-1886, alex.molnar@asu.edu.
• E. Vance Randall is a professor in the department of educational leadership and foundations at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah. He has written about private education, parental rights and the role of religion in education. Contact 801-422-5073, Vance_randall@byu.edu.
• Kathy Miller is president of the Texas Freedom Network, a grassroots organization of religious and community leaders based in Austin that advocates for "a mainstream agenda of religious freedom and individual liberties to counter the religious right," according to its web site. The Texas Freedom Network has worked to defeat a series of school voucher bills presented in the Texas Legislature in the last decade. Contact through communications director Dan Quinn, 512-322-0545, dan@tfn.org.  

IN THE WEST/NORTHWEST
• Bruce Fuller is a professor of education and public policy and education at the University of California at Berkeley. He has studied decentralization in public education, including the development of charter schools and voucher programs. He also is co-director of Policy Analysis for California Education, an independent research center on education policy. Contact 510-643-5362, b_fuller@uclink4.berkeley.edu.
• Steven K. Green is a law professor at Willamette University in Salem, Ore. He has written law review articles about the church-state issues that voucher programs raise and has filed amicus briefs in both the Florida and Cleveland voucher cases. Contact 503-370-6732, sgreen@willamette.edu.
• Martin Carnoy is a professor of education and economics at Stanford University. He is the author of School Vouchers: Examining the Evidence (Economic Policy Institute, 2001) and also is a co-author of The Charter School Dust-Up: Examining the Evidence on Enrollment and Achievement (Teachers College Press, 2005). Read an October 2000 opinion piece he wrote, originally published in the Franklin (Pa.) News-Herald and now posted on the Economic Policy Institute web site, in which Carnoy argues that not enough evidence has been presented that vouchers improve student performance. Contact 650-725-1254, carnoy@stanford.edu.