Vouchers, Legal and Logical

There are three distinct ways to look at school vouchers.

One is to regard them as a bogeyman threatening to destroy the American public educational system and undermine the sublime values that system instills in its students. Call that the "teachers unions" approach.

The second is to regard them as a lifeline for poor parents, a means of allowing those without means to provide their children a chance to escape failing public schools.

That was President Bush's approach in his recent State of the Union address, wherein he lauded the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship program Congress approved at the beginning of 2004. That enactment permitted more than 2,600 of the poorest children in Washington, previously enrolled in D.C.'s poorly performing public schools, to transfer to nonpublic schools, including religious ones, of their parents' choice.

The president went on to propose a "Pell Grants for Kids" initiative, intended to help children "trapped in failing public schools" attend private and religious schools, presumably along the lines of the District of Columbia program.

But the reference to Pell Grants, which provide need-based grants to low-income students for postsecondary education, was puzzling. Because the Pell Grant model applied to younger students would be a reflection of the third way of approaching school vouchers.

That would be to regard them as something more than a "next stop" after a child has been sentenced to wasted years — or worse — in a failing school. To regard them, instead, as the empowerment of a fundamental parental right: the right to chose how one wishes to educate one's children.

Pell Grants are not just for students in failing public colleges, but for all students whose families could not otherwise afford to continue their educations. The theory is straightforward: Wealthy students have access to quality higher education, poorer ones do not. Let government do what it can to level the playing field, allowing more young people who otherwise would end up in menial jobs or worse become accountants, scientists, doctors, lawyers, or teachers themselves — and taxpayers.

The logic of allowing for more educational choice is particularly compelling when it comes to the early years of educational careers, when children's minds and morals are molded by their school experiences. Even a plan like the District of Columbia initiative can be accessed by parents only after their child has languished in a failing school. When that child has been released from his or her internment, perhaps even scarred by the experience, any siblings will have to do their own time before they, too, can qualify for a better educational environment.

Is there any reason why parents — all parents — should not have the final say in where their children are educated? We readily recognize that parents in a pluralistic society like ours have a right to raise their children as they see fit, within the bounds of law, instilling in them the values they hold dear. In Judaism — and surely other belief systems and philosophies — that is not only a right but a responsibility. Choosing the right school for a child should be seen as an essential expression of that right and responsibility.

Education, after all, is much more than the transfer of information, much more, even, than training minds to think. It is the imparting of attitudes, ideals, and values as well, particularly today, when so often both parents (when there even are two) are working, sometimes at multiple jobs, and when children (even when they are at home) are regularly left to their own devices and those of the virtual child-molester we call television. It would be folly to deny that schools help shape a child's development. Should parents not have the final say about which schools nurture their young?

Public school advocates — including those who enjoy the option of being able to afford private schools for their own children even while opposing governmental policies that would extend that option to those less financially fortunate — say no. They appear to be responding from fear, unfounded though it may be. The public school system qua system will only benefit from true school choice.

Were all American parents able to send their children to the schools of their choice, some individual public schools might indeed wither away from lack of interest. But that's just the fate of any inferior product in the face of competition. Choices, though, are always a boon to quality, and to the consumer. Public schools that do the job they are supposed to do will surely continue to thrive.

The constitutionality of vouchers once made for legal debate, but the United States Supreme Court has determined that the concept of providing parents educational vouchers with which to guide their children's education does not violate the Constitution. So school choice is both logical and legal.

And compelling. There is straightforward justice in empowering parents to choose how their children are educated, to exercise what is perhaps, the most important civil right of all.

Rabbi Shafran, director of public affairs of Agudath Israel of America, is a frequent contributor to the Sun.