Giving Students Opportunity

As part of its efforts to boost educational opportunities for disadvantaged children, last year Louisiana enacted the Student Scholarships for Educational Excellence Program. The statewide program provides tuition vouchers to children from families with incomes below 250{010c6536f15f83a69f09c4467fdfb4a5656804feab27fe0dec71ed1e80da306f} of the poverty line whose children otherwise would attend public schools that the state has graded C, D or F.  This year, roughly 8,000 children are using vouchers to attend private schools. Among those, 91{010c6536f15f83a69f09c4467fdfb4a5656804feab27fe0dec71ed1e80da306f} are minority and 86{010c6536f15f83a69f09c4467fdfb4a5656804feab27fe0dec71ed1e80da306f} would have attended public schools with D or F grades.

Attorney General Eric Holder argues the program runs afoul of desegregation orders, which operate in 34 Louisiana school districts. By potentially altering the racial composition of those schools by taking minority children out of failing public schools, the Justice Department asserts the program “frustrates and impedes the desegregation process.”  It has asked the federal court to forbid future scholarships in those districts until the state requests and receives approval in each of the 22 or more cases that might be affected.  It seeks an injunction in Brumfield v. Dodd, a case filed nearly 40 years ago challenging a program that provided state funding for textbooks and transportation for private “segregation academies,” to which white students were fleeing to avoid integration.  Since 1975, private schools have had to demonstrate that they do not discriminate in order to participate in that program.

The Louisiana Student Scholarships for Educational Excellence Program restricts participation to private schools that have met the Brumfield nondiscrimination requirements.  The program further requires private schools to admit students on a random basis.  Thus the program clearly complies with Brumfield.  And the Brumfield court has no jurisdiction over the desegregation decrees to which the Justice Dept. seeks to subject the voucher program.