Freedom From Religion Foundation Senior Policy Counsel Ryan Jayne dissects Wisconsin’s nearly 30-year-long “voucher experiment” in an op-ed published in the Madison newspaper.
“Nearly half of all private school students in Wisconsin now receive a taxpayer-funded school voucher, according to Wisconsin Watch,” Jayne writes in the Wisconsin State Journal. “And almost all voucher schools in Wisconsin are religiously affiliated, according to the state Department of Public Instruction.”
The piece continues with a detailed history lesson on Wisconsin’s voucher program — and how it’s failed FFRF’s home state:
Wisconsin’s modern voucher era began in 1989 with the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program, initially restricted to nonreligious private schools. This swiftly changed in 1998, when enrollment surged after the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled, by a narrow margin, that expanding the program to include religious schools was not state-sponsored religious education. At the time, supporters assured the public that safeguards such as parental choice and opt-out provisions would prevent constitutional entanglements.
Nearly 30 years later, those assurances ring hollow.
The “choice” taxpayers are funding is largely a myth, because many Wisconsin families don’t live near a private school that shares their religious beliefs (or lack thereof). But those same families are now routinely taxed to fund religious instruction, precisely the kind of government involvement in religion that the First Amendment was designed to prevent.
Voucher defenders often point to a provision in Wisconsin law allowing parents to opt their children out of religious instruction. In theory, this is meant to preserve neutrality.
But in practice, it likely has almost no effect because parents typically choose to send their children to private schools in large part because of the school’s religious instruction. Though no data is publicly available on how often religious opt-outs occur, it makes sense that parents would avoid placing their children in an environment where they would be seen as religious outsiders.
These ineffective safeguards matter because constitutional violations do not disappear simply because participation is voluntary. When the state overwhelmingly directs public funds for religious instruction, it impermissibly advances religion.
The U.S. Supreme Court’s increasingly permissive jurisprudence on vouchers does not change the underlying principle: Compelled taxpayer support of religious instruction is deeply divisive and corrosive to pluralism. That’s why the primary author of the First Amendment, James Madison, denounced even “three pence” of taxes going to support teachers of the Christian religion, in his famed “Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments.”
Wisconsin’s voucher program also has consequences beyond the separation of state and church. As vouchers expand, they siphon resources from public schools that serve the vast majority of students and that are required to educate every child, regardless of disability, religion or background.
Voucher schools can discriminate in their admissions. Private schools lacking a public mission may well reject “difficult” students, such as those with special needs, leaving public schools with fewer resources to serve more students who require extra resources. Adding salt to the wound, the statehouse had the temerity to reimburse private schools for 90 percent of special education costs, while giving public schools less than 50 percent.
To conclude the piece, Jayne admonishes Wisconsin officials for the voucher experiment and emphasizes the need for the state to focus on public schools: “Instead of foolishly funding two separate school systems (one public, secular and accountable, the other private, sectarian and with almost no accountability for the more than $600 million in tax money it gets annually), Wisconsin needs to re-earn its reputation as an educational leader. It needs to reinvest in public schools and their unifying mission.”
The full op-ed is placed behind a paywall. Please consider supporting the local news website, Madison.com, to access the full article.
This column is part of FFRF’s initiative to engage with pertinent national and state issues and spread the messages of freethought and nontheism to a broader audience.
The Freedom From Religion Foundation is a Madison-based national nonprofit organization with 42,000 members and several chapters nationwide, including over 1,800 members and two local chapters in Wisconsin. FFRF’s purposes are to protect the constitutional principle of separation between church and state, and to educate the public on matters relating to nontheism.
