Public funding of private schools: A profile of voucher law in one state

During the first half of the twentieth century, a strong wall of separation between church and state stood in the way of public financial support for private, religious schools. Over the past sixty years, the Supreme Court has gradually eliminated any roadblocks to the public funding of private, religious schools. By 2007, religious schools whose clearly stated mission was to inculcate religion were receiving millions of dollars of public funds. Through legal research, "the process of finding the law that governs an activity and materials that explain or analyze that law," this study sought to discover how the wall of separation between church and state was dismantled. It began with an historical look at the term "wall of separation" and then focused on an analysis of the court cases that one by one dismantled the wall at the federal level. The first critical case was Everson v. Board of Education, decided by the United States Supreme Court in 1947. The last case studied was Bush v. Holmes, decided by the Florida Supreme Court in 2006. This analysis showed that a critical change in the evolution of Establishment Clause law was the meaning of the word effect. In 1947, effect referred to what actually happened as the result of some action. By 2006, effect had come to mean what was intended, with no regard to actually happened. New members of the Court could not amend the Constitution, so they changed the meaning of one simple word thereby changing the law. In order to understand the actual effects of the change in Establishment Clause law, the study also analyzed Florida voucher law. Florida was selected because it had the only statewide voucher program in the country. That analysis found a double standard in the state. Public schools were held to a very high degree of accountability. Private schools that accepted public dollars had very little accountability, and there were few protections for the children who used vouchers to attend them.; This study concludes that where public money is being used to support private schools, there needs to be a truth-in-education law. States must require that private schools that agree to accept public funding be held to the same standards of accountability as public schools.