The first organization out of the box to salute today’s Indiana court decision endorsing vouchers is the Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice, which exists to support vouchers.
As you learned in an earlier post today, vouchers in Sweden have been concurrent with growing social stratification (in the U.S., we would call it growing segregation by race and class), lower test scores on international assessments since 1995, and growing profits for vendors of educational services.
So if vouchers spread, we can expect resegregation of U.S. schools, even worse than what already exists; we can expect public funds to flow to church schools that teach creationism; we can expect growing inequality; and we can expect no improvement whatever in education.
Milwaukee has had vouchers since 1990 and is today one of the nation’s lowest performing school districts.
This is an ominous trend, which will hurt our democracy, our schools, and our children:
From the Friedman Foundation:
For release March 26, 2013
Indiana Supreme Court Rules School Vouchers Constitutional
INDIANAPOLIS — The Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice hailed today’s ruling from the Indiana Supreme Court, which declared the state’s school voucher program constitutional. The announcement ends a nearly two-year-long review of the nation’s largest voucher initiative, for which more than half of the state’s student population qualifies.
The Indiana Supreme Court upheld the program by a vote of 5-0, ruling “the voucher program expenditures do not directly benefit religious schools but rather directly benefit lower-income families with school-children by providing an opportunity for such children to attend non-public schools if desired.”
Following the enactment of the Choice Scholarship Program in May 2011, a group of Indiana taxpayers represented by the National Education Association filed suit, claiming vouchers improperly benefited private religious schools. Parents who intervened in the case, represented by the Institute for Justice, argued the true beneficiaries of the program were the families.
“Kids and parents won today,” said Robert Enlow, president and CEO of the Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice. “With this announcement, Indiana should move immediately to make this opportunity available to more families, and other states should look at this victory and see that the education establishment’s ability to obstruct families’ freedom to choose is waning.”
The Meredith v. Daniels lawsuit moved to the state Supreme Court after a Marion County Superior Court judge ruled in favor of the program in January 2012. Judge Michael Keele rejected the plaintiffs’ argument the Choice Scholarship Program violated the Indiana Constitution’s Blaine Amendment, which prohibits state treasury money from being used explicitly for the benefit of religious or theological institutions.
Judge Keele noted that scholarship recipients can “choose to use the funding for education at a public, secular private, or religious private school.” Such was the opinion of the U.S. Supreme Court in 2002, when it upheld the constitutionality of Cleveland’s school voucher program.
“School choice continues to prove its successes nationwide,” Enlow added, “whether that’s in schools, homes, legislatures, or courtrooms. The issue is about giving families the right to find the best educational setting for their kids, pure and simple. Protectors of the status quo should stop standing in the way of kids and rather work to increase the availability of high-quality educational options.”
Indiana’s legislature currently is reviewing a proposal to expand the Choice Scholarship Program. In the program’s second year, 9,324 low- and middle-income families are participating. The expansion would allow siblings of voucher recipients, children with special needs, kids in foster care, and K-12 dependents of military members to qualify for vouchers. It also would increase the cap on the individual voucher amount to $6,500 from its current $4,500.
Currently, 22 states and Washington, D.C., have some type of private school choice measure. In voucher programs specifically, there are 104,000 participants in 12 states and Washington, D.C.
About the Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice
The Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit and nonpartisan organization, solely dedicated to advancing Milton and Rose Friedman’s vision of school choice for all children. First established as the Milton and Rose D. Friedman Foundation in 1996, the Foundation continues to promote school choice as the most effective and equitable way to improve the quality of K-12 education in America. The Foundation is dedicated to research, education, and outreach on the vital issues and implications related to choice and competition in K-12 education.
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