In lengthy hearings today, the Indiana House Education Committee considered a bill that would institute a state-wide school voucher program, sending taxpayer dollars to private schools, including religious schools.
House Bill 1003 would create a system that uses a sliding scale to determine the size of the voucher for which each family is eligible.
It would allow families that qualify for the federal free and reduced lunch program to take 90 percent of the dollars that would have ordinarily gone to their student’s public school and use that money to pay for private school tuition instead.
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Private schools that accept vouchers would then face the same accountability standards as public schools, which means their students would have to take the ISTEP exam and they’d be rated on an A-F scale each year.
The same accountability standards in testing perhaps, but not the same commitment to maintaining a neutral position with respect to religion.Private schools accepting voucher money would remain free to use that taxpayer money on mandatory religious education.
The Supreme Court may have decided that "indirect aid" for private schools is constitutional, but that doesn't maake it right, either for students' education, or for the religious organizations suddenly using government funds to promote their faith.
