School Choice is a program that allows students to attend any private, public or charter school based on a system of vouchers. School vouchers redirect the flow of education funding, channeling it directly to families rather than to school districts. This allows families to select the public or private school of their choice and have all or part of the tuition paid for with their tax dollars.
The Indiana House of Representatives recently passed the nation’s largest school choice voucher program. The bill operates on a sliding income scale, allowing families of four making less than $60,000 per year to become eligible for a voucher. Depending on income levels, some families may receive up to 90% of taxpayer funded support towards their tuition. Seven thousand, five hundred school choice scholarships have been made available to Indiana families for this coming school year.
While these types of scholarships have the potential to help many students thrive in the schools of their parents’ choice, they are also an efficient, economical option. By using a portion of the tax money already set aside for a child’s education, voucher programs give families freedom to choose the best school for their child without increasing the cost to taxpayers.
New York needs similar legislation using our tax dollars, regardless of income. We are already paying taxes which support the public education system, yet we cannot choose the school that best meets the needs of our children.
If we want our tax dollars to be spent on our children’s educations, we must send them to public schools where the government decides what they will be taught, including programs that do not necessarily conform to our political and/or religious outlook.
Parents who opt out of this system and send their children to religious or private schools are penalized with the loss of educational funding (their tax dollars). Clearly, this violates the First Amendment which says: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…” What greater violation can there be than daily financial penalties for sending our children to alternative schools?
As if this were not enough, we have the 14th Amendment which states: “No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law…” However, those who choose alternative education are denied funding, to which they have contributed.
If this too were not enough, we also have the Civil Rights Act of 1964 which states: “An act to provide injunctive relief against discrimination in public accommodations to protect constitutional rights in public facilities and public education.”
Here, “public education” is taken to mean only public schools run by the educational establishment. Parents who choose private or religious school for their children are compelled to suffer financial burdens. No greater government-sanctioned abuse of civil rights exists in America today. The results are financially devastating.
By forcing parents to pay for government-run schools and denying them funding for alternative education, our government has usurped the rights of parents to raise their own children. By pushing parents aside and assuming the responsibility for raising our youth, our government has intervened in the very foundation of our societal structure, a task for which it is not suited.
Our government functions far better conducting its constitutionally mandated responsibilities, such as national defense. Just as families are not fit to fight wars, so are governments unfit to raise families.
Many of the ills we suffer today can be directly traced to the weakening of the family. This is where we need to focus our attention if we are to find our way back to America’s true potential as envisioned by our country’s founders.
By organizing on the grass roots level throughout the country, we can place enormous pressure on our political leaders, and on candidates at all levels of government, to come on board. We need not win a majority of them over to our side in order to succeed. This was clearly demonstrated when the political establishment was determined to ram through legislation for broad amnesty for illegal aliens. Once a few senators realized that their senate seats were at risk they came around.
School Choice, as a national issue, has the potential of turning the tide of the 2012 election, because equal educational opportunity is the dream of countless moms and dads across America, including African Americans, Hispanics, Catholics, Orthodox Jews and many others. This issue can truly change the political face of America, if word gets around.
We need to take immediate action and let every one of our representatives and candidates know that it is absolutely essential for us to have legislation providing equal educational opportunity for every child in America. This needs to be legislated at the federal level, and supported at the state and local levels. The sooner we elect representatives, who support School Choice, the sooner our children will be rescued. We therefore need to do this now.
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Ben-Gurion Matsas supports Free Choice in Education in New York. Write to info@schoolchoiceny.org.
