Religion, Education, and America

The U.S. Supreme Court just upheld the right of Washington State to deny a taxpayer-funded scholarship to a theology student. While the court's ruling emphasized that Washington state could legally have offered the theology student a scholarship if it had chosen to, it nevertheless has major implications not only for the school choice movement but for our entire nation.

The constitutions of all but three states in the nation have either a "Blaine Amendment" (which precludes government funding of devotional religious instruction) or a "compelled support" clause (which prohibits any citizen from being forced to support religious activities, including education). But whether codified in law or not, compelling people to support education that violates their convictions is socially divisive. What's more, our existing system of public schooling is equally so. At present, families seeking religious schooling are at a great financial disadvantage since they have to pay for both the secular public schools and their own children's religious education. The solution? Universal Education Tax Credits (UETCs).

UETCs allow every family to pursue the kind of education they value without forcing anyone to support instruction to which they object. They do so by offering tax credits to anyone who pays for a child's education. That means parents can take a credit against their own children's educational expenses, and other taxpayers can take a credit for donations they make for the education of other people's children. Donation credits, collected by private scholarship granting organizations and then distributed to low- and middle-income families, ensure that all children have access to the educational marketplace.

No state has yet implemented a full UETC program, though donation credits already exist in Pennsylvania, Florida, and Arizona, and personal use education tax credits exist in Illinois. A full UETC program combining both personal use and donation tax credits is soon to be tabled in South Carolina. And therein lies the future not only of the school choice movement but of public education itself.