Privatizing Public Education

There is no doubt that the state needs to do more to educate students in poor areas, but a bill making its way through the state Legislature is not the answer.

The Opportunity Scholarship Act, which has been approved by the Senate Budget and Appropriations Committee and the Assembly Commerce and Economic Development Committee and awaits further committee hearings and a vote of the full Legislature, would grant tax credits to corporations that make contributions to designated nonprofit agencies tasked with providing scholarships to low-income students who attended “chronically failing” schools in one of 13 municipalities – Asbury Park, Camden, East Orange, Elizabeth, Jersey City, Lakewood, Newark, Orange, Passaic, Paterson, Perth Amboy, Plainfield, and Trenton. The scholarships would amount to approximately $8,000 for elementary school students and $11,000 for high school students. The bill would allow for up to a quarter of scholarships to be awarded to students in non-public schools.

Taxpayers might see this is a win-win approach to school funding, thinking that it helps poor kids go to better schools without taxpayers picking up the tab. The reality, however, is quite different.

The Senate Budget and Appropriations Committee, in its report on the bill, said it would cost the state $845 million in tax revenue, at a time when the governor already is slashing education spending (his administration is due in court to defend its $1.1 billion cut for the current school year).

That lost revenue has to come from some place and, while it is nice to think that the scholarships will plug the gap, we have to be honest about the effect that this kind of budgetary legerdemain will have on the districts losing out.

Philosophically, the bill raises two questions, one constitutional – the government-backed scholarships could be used for religious schools – the other about our commitment to public education in general.

As Robert Braun pointed out recently in The Star-Ledger, these tax credits put every New Jersey resident in the position of financially supporting religious dogma. Catholic schools, which make up the bulk of religious schools, can preach Catholic values, which not only include charity, but also claim that homosexuality and abortion are sins.

Braun, a Catholic, believes in the Church’s message and endorses the rights of Catholic schools to “convey the message of Christ,” but with one caveat: “the furtherance of that message should not be accomplished with public funds that come not only voluntarily from Catholics but also involuntarily through taxes from Protestants, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, other believers and non-believers.”

Just as significantly, the bill is an admission that we no longer are committed to public education. Rather than state firmly and honestly that educating all students at a high level is good for society as a whole and that, because of this, we have a responsibility to pay our fair share, the Legislature and the governor want corporate money to pay to educate only a small portion of the kids who attend failing schools. And it appears that the larger society – from Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and television talk queen Oprah Winfrey to President Obama and Newark Mayor Corey Booker – is willing to fix our schools by gutting one of the few democratizing entities in American society.