PHOENIX — On March 25, the Arizona Supreme Court delivered the latest in a string of blows to the movement to provide tax funding for tuition at private and religious schools.
A unanimous five-member court said a plain reading of a provision in the Arizona Constitution outlaws two small programs that provided publicly funded vouchers that students could use to attend private and parochial schools. One program was for students with disabilities; another served children in foster care.
“The voucher programs appear to be a well-intentioned effort to assist two distinct student populations with special needs. But we are bound by our constitution,” wrote Justice Michael Ryan in the court’s Cain v. Horne opinion. “There may well be ways of providing aid to these student populations without violating the constitution. But, absent a constitutional amendment, because the Aid Clause does not permit appropriations of public money to private and sectarian schools, the voucher programs violate Article 9, Section 10 of the Arizona Constitution.”
Voucher programs — once hailed by education reformers as a way to rescue kids in failing public school systems and encourage competition that would improve such schools — have proven unpopular both at the ballot box and in state courts.
Voters in California and Utah recently rebuffed statewide voucher programs, and the highest courts in Maine and Florida have cited similar provisions of their states’ charters to prohibit vouchers for religious schools. In early March, Congress voted to discontinue funding for an experimental voucher program in the District of Columbia.
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