Jews Split on School Vouchers

Those within the Jewish community who are against school vouchers explain their stand on the issue with the reasons below. 

Public School Education

A program of school vouchers will siphon off much needed tax dollars from public to private and sectarian education.

Secondly, the vouchers will only enables a relatively small number of select students to attend private and sectarian institutions, and leave behind a public student population consisting of the most underprivileged, unmotivated, troubled, and learning disabled.

A family with a $2500 voucher will have to be able to afford the rest of the school’s tuition and expenses. Thus, even with the voucher program, there will be many who cannot afford to attend a private school. And the private schools may reject other students for reasons such as religion, academic talent or behavioral problems.

Under the voucher system, private schools would be filled with well-to-do and middle-class students and a handful of the best, most motivated students from inner cities. Public schools would be left with fewer dollars to teach the poorest and other students who, for one reason or another, were not private school material. Public education would deteriorate further under the voucher system.  

American Democracy

The American system of public education is for all children. This policy of inclusiveness has made public schools the backbone of American democracy.

Further, some private schools promote agendas antithetical to the American ideal. The voucher system may enable schools run by extremist groups like the Nation of Islam or the Ku Klux Klan to subsidize their racist and anti-Semitic agendas with public funds.

Divide Jewish children from American children

Voucher programs may assist relatively small percentage of Jewish parents sending their children to day schools or yeshivot, and may encourage more Jewish parents to give their children private Jewish education. However, voucher programs will not serve the best interest of the broader American Jewish community.

Fewer non-Jewish children would meet or interact with Jewish children in public schools and would learn about religions other than Christianity.

Fewer Jewish children would meet and interact with non-Jewish children. Jewish children would become less mainstream.

Violates Separation of Church and State

Separation of Church and State is a Constitutional principle established in the First Amendment.

Judaism has flourished in America because government has not interfered. Jewish children have been able to attend American public schools without being confronted with Christian prayers or texts.  

Steve Bayme, director of the American Jewish Committee’s Department of Contemporary Jewish Life, has said, “The Committee’s position is that the separation of church and state has been the safeguard of American Jewish religious liberty. Government aid to Jewish schools will mean government aid to Christian schools as well, and amounting to government sanction of particular forms of religion.”

In many areas, 80 percent of vouchers would be used in schools whose central mission is religious training. Channeling public money to these institutions is a direct breach in the wall the constitution has created between Church and State. Government aid always comes with strings attached.

Public education, American democracy, relations between Jews and non-Jews, and an important Constitutional principle would be compromised by school vouchers according to some Jews. This group of Jews believes that it is possible to find better solutions for the failing public school system in America.