Tuition Tax Credits: Debate and Rebuttal

Professors Skillen and Puckett face off over proposed legislation supporting tuition tax credits for private education.

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There is a lot of discussion today about tuition tax credits. But what are they? Tuition tax credits are credits the U.S. Internal Revenue Service will grant individuals for tuition paid for a family member to attend a private educational institution. Some currently proposed legislation would apply these to college-level institutions; others would pertain to primary and secondary schools.

A tax credit, of course, is more valuable than a tax deduction.

For instance, if you owed the federal government $1,000 in taxes, you could, under proposed legislation, subtract half of what you paid in tuition to private schools from that debt. If you paid $500 in tuition, you could subtract $250 from the $1,000 owed.

A tax deduction, on the other hand, is of value to you only according to your tax bracket. If you are in the 30 percent bracket, you could save only 30 cents on the dollar for tuition expenses by claiming them as a deduction.

Tuition tax credits therefore constitute a major legislative proposal, marshaling both advocates and detractors. In favor of tuition tax credits is James Skillen, executive director of the Association for Public Justice. He is a graduate of Wheaton College and Westminster Seminary, and earned a doctorate from Duke University. He has taught at Gordon College, Messiah College, and Dordt College in Iowa.

Opposing tuition tax credits is R. G. Puckett, executive director of Americans United. He graduated from Western Kentucky University and Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville. He was a Southern Baptist pastor in Kentucky, Ohio, Florida, and Maryland, and editor of denominational publications in three states.

The Debate Follows

Dr. Skillen:

My concern over the issue of tax credits is not to find a way to get extra money for Christians who support private schools. My basic concern is one of justice. America needs to find an equitable arrangement for educating the youth of our land.

We must begin by looking at the whole structure of our American system of education. Who is responsible for the education of our children? As evangelical Christians who take the Bible seriously, I think most of us would have to say that parents have primary responsibility for the education of their children.

To illustrate, let’s just say my wife and I want our children to have piano lessons. We assume that as parents we are the principals responsible for filling our children’s needs and are also accountable for the circumstances into which we place them in order to fill those needs. If we discover we are unable to find a capable piano teacher on our own, we might look to an agency. But even if the agency supplies us with a piano teacher, we, as parents—not the agency—bear primary responsibility for filling our children’s needs.

Now let us apply that illustration to the issue of our government’s relationship to education. Up until the 1840s, Americans assumed almost without question that education was the concern of parents. For the most part, schools were not state supported, state founded, or state initiated. They were not government schools at all. Parents were responsible for the education of their own children.

The state of Massachusetts became involved in education only when officials perceived that some parents were not adequately teaching their children the three Rs. Where the primary parental responsibility failed, or for some reason was impossible, the government had a secondary responsibility and on that basis was to step in to fill the gaps. Officials were particularly concerned about the educational needs of orphans.

A variety of schools emerged at this time: church schools, schools founded by associations or groups of people, and schools we might call public schools in the sense that they were founded by some public authority though not necessarily established by a state government. But in all this variety, parents were still assumed to carry principal responsibility for the education of their children.

Toward the middle of the nineteenth century, the movement toward what we know now as the American structure of education took shape in a distinction made between public and private schools. A curious fact about this distinction is that its momentum, arising out of controversies in New York and Boston, came from Protestants. A heavy influx of Irish Roman Catholics into New York was forcing Catholic schools to appeal for state funds that up to that time were proportionately divided among schools, many of them Protestant and Christian.

Fearful of Catholic raids on the educational coffers, Protestants turned over the structure of the financing and legal process of their schools to the New York Public School Society. From then on, this agency continued to distribute the common, or tax-collected, funds to the newly defined nonsectarian schools. Catholics were permitted to have their own schools, but under this new system they would have to pay for them themselves.

From this point on, American education assumed a distinction between private, parochial schools, and nonsectarian or public schools. Because public schools were now viewed as government schools supported by public taxes for all society, they were assumed to be neutral or unconnected in any way with any particular religious conviction. These schools were for everyone; private schools were for minority groups.

A closer look at these so-called public or neutral schools of the nineteenth century, however, would startle today’s observer. Most of these schools were very religious and very Protestant. They were “neutral” among evangelical Protestant groups, but not neutral for nontheists or nonsupernaturalists or even Roman Catholics. The King James Bible was taught in classrooms and a definite Christian morality was advocated.

The American public, aside from Jews and Catholics who had to endure this Protestant bias, was unperturbed, because the broad outlines of the Protestant viewpoints were approved by the majority. Today that sort of philosophy no longer dominates our public schools. Many evangelical Protestants who take their religious convictions seriously are deeply troubled by what they see happening to their children. They perceive public schools today as dominated by a secular, humanistic philosophy in open conflict with Christian convictions. A growing number of parents, therefore, are pulling their children out of these schools and placing them in the mushrooming numbers of private schools.

Many Christians are now suddenly concerned about the kind of influence the public schools bring to bear on their school children. They now wonder whether the neutrality of education in the primary and secondary years of public education is really a myth. Perhaps we cannot now expect the American people to accept biblical doctrines and biblical values.

But if we have agreed that the general citizenry should directly control public schools—including or excluding what they want in them on a majority basis—then as Protestants today we should not complain if secular humanism dominates the schools. If a secular humanistic philosophy of education is what the majority wants, then secular humanism will dominate our schools and ultimately warp our children. Those who abrogate their parental responsibility for the education of their children and give that right and responsibility to the government cannot object when their children are molded by an anti-Christian philosophy of education.

Despite the growing distinction between private and public schools after the nineteenth century, some ambiguity in legal decisions regarding education remained. In the Society of Sisters case in Oregon, a law that attempted to prohibit parents from sending their children to anything other than state schools was contested. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled the law unconstitutional, stating parents had the right to educate their children in the way they wanted. Behind the ruling was the government’s recognition of the primary responsibility of parents in the education of their children.

Today, then, we have two principals vying for authority over education: the state or government or community, with its elected school board, and parents. Parents have the right to opt out of governmental responsibility if they want, but only if they pay their own way. They must also continue to pay the government’s way.

We must go back to the basics in education in order to find a better way in America. We propose that government should no longer view itself as holding the primary responsibility in education, but that it is parents who should be responsible for the education of children. Government should view its role in education only as a secondary principal working toward the equitable, proportioned financing of all agents of education that offer themselves in society. If parents, citizens, or communities are unable or unwilling to educate everyone, then government should be asked to provide its own schools. But government schools should then not be viewed as more legitimate or worthy of receiving public money than other schools. Rather, they should be on an equitable basis with them.

For example, if Catholics educate 10 percent of the children in a state, Protestants 10 percent, Jews 10 percent, and the government 70 percent, then public taxes collected for education should be distributed proportionately to all schools. Ten percent of these funds should go to Catholics, 10 to Protestants, 10 to Jews, and 70 percent to state schools.

Up until the 1840s Americans assumed almost without question that education was the concern of parents. Schools were not state supported, state founded, or state initiated.

As government is not the only agent of education today in our nation, it should not therefore continue to be the only recipient of public funds for education. Proposed legislation to establish tuition tax credits is one step in the direction of a more equitable distribution of public funds. But it is only a small step. We would be unhappy if all such legislation accomplished was to provide economic relief for those people who are opting out of public education. This could only promote division between public school advocates and Christians who might be seen as money-hungry dissenters reaching into the public pocket for funds to meet their own ends.

Instead, Christians need to have dialogue and discuss the whole structure of education so as to formulate a new, equitable system for the education of every student in this country.

Tuition tax credits are just one small step in the right direction.

Dr. Puckett:

Approximately 34 different proposals pertaining to tuition tax credits are currently under consideration by Congress. Some proposals are simple, some are complex. Some bring property and capitalization into consideration; some suggest outright cash expenditure for education.

The proposal most often discussed is the Senate’s Packwood-Moynihan Bill, S. 550. One recommendation in this bill suggests that a parent whose expenditure for education is less than what he is entitled to as a tuition tax credit is eligible for a cash refund from the government.

Tuition tax credits are not new; they have been discussed for more than 20 years. In the last few years, however, this discussion has intensified. In 1978, an earlier Packwood-Moynihan proposal was defeated. Another proposal was shot down three to one in the Senate in 1979. Now yet another proposal has been introduced.

I offer five reasons why I think tuition tax credits are bad legislation:

1. Tuition tax credits are unconstitutional.

In 1973, the New York Supreme Court ruled against tuition tax credits. The court stated that there was no question but that tuition tax credits would channel money into sectarian schools since almost 90 percent of students in nonpublic schools were in church-related institutions. This money would go through parents indirectly into the churches because of their schools.

I am distressed that Senators Packwood and Moynihan treat this state supreme court ruling so lightly in their push for legislation. In challenging such decisions, the legislative—or the executive—branch of government is in effect asking the courts to “tell us again and give us another decision.”

It seems clear to me that tuition tax credit bills are attempts to circumvent court rulings so as to provide private schools indirectly with federal aid they are prohibited from receiving directly. The courts have consistently maintained that the government shall not do indirectly what it is barred from doing directly.

2. Tuition tax credits would harm public schools.

Public schools are under serious criticism today—though I am sure everyone would agree that our democracy is dependent upon an educated constituency. While it is the right and responsibility of parents to educate their children, it is also the obligation of the corporate community to educate its constituency if democracy is to prevail. But a fragmented system of education—where the affluent, the privileged, or those with special religious perspectives can get quality education in an elitist setting, and where the poor or disadvantaged are relegated to inferior education in meagerly supported public schools—is hardly just.

Recent surveys indicate that two-thirds of Americans feel public schools are good to excellent. The one-third who are critical of the system speak out of their personal negative reaction to inner-city schools that are affected by social conditions, out of ignorance of what is really going on in the schools, or out of a sectarian or religious bias against public education.

We must admit that we have burdened the schools with much they were never intended, or are poorly equipped, to do. We have used them as agents of social change. The public schools have been burdened with welfare-type programs in food and health. They have been allowed to move away from basic educational responsibilities, and, as a result, we have seen them fail to educate children adequately.

I contend that much of the failure in the American classroom originates in the American family room. Public schools do not perpetuate the evils in our society so much as they reflect them. The public schools are not baby sitters, caretakers, or disciplinarians that can make up for what is lacking in the home. They demand the involvement, support, and participation of parents.

3. Tuition tax credits are fiscally unwise.

There is a great deal of talk and action today about reducing spending and size of government, thereby lessening the tax burdens of its citizens. Though I agree with that approach both politically and philosophically, I perceive an ironic contradiction in the Reagan administration. Two days after the House Committee on Education and Labor held hearings on tuition tax credits last September (where a Treasury Department representative announced the administration’s support for the program), President Reagan explained on national television the need to reduce the federal budget by several billion dollars. Included were cuts in education programs.

Early projections of tuition tax credits suggest they will cost from $2.7 to $7 billion. One legislator has suggested that once the proposal was in effect, costs could quickly escalate to as much as $30 billion a year. Is this cost consistent with the administration’s policy of curbing federal expense?

4. Tuition tax credits would create divisiveness and hostility.

Once tax money begins to flow into nonpublic schools there will be distinctions made that invite polarization and positioning along religious, as well as cultural and social, lines. People will position themselves behind their favored schools in a polarization that can only serve to weaken the country. “Ordinarily political debate and division, however vigorous or even partisan, are normal and healthy manifestations of our democratic system of government,” wrote Chief Justice Warren Burger in the 1971 Lemmon decision. “But political division along religious lines was one of the principal evils the First Amendment was intended to protect. The potential divisiveness of such conflict is a threat to the normal political process—in conflict with our whole history and tradition …”

5. Tuition tax credits invite government intervention in the private sector.

Where government money flows, government intervention follows. Of course, the state has an obligation to protect and monitor the tax funds of its citizens. But to those who value their independence and freedom in the administration and operation of parochial schools, the specter of increasing involvement by the government must remain the real threat behind the temptation to use public funds for private education.

Anyone who has questions about what happens when government and private schools tangle should consider the Internal Revenue Service and Bob Jones University controversy, as well as other similar disputes.

Tuition tax credits are a dangerous prelude to the loss of freedom for parochial schools. We ought to bury the idea before it buries us.

Dr. Skillen’s Rebuttal:

I would like to follow Dr. Puckett’s own precise outline to reply to the five reasons he cited against tuition tax credits.

1. Are tuition tax credits really unconstitutional?

The problem is that the Supreme Court does not now have, nor has it ever had, a clear, unambiguous position on this issue. Though there may have been a ruling against tuition tax credits in 1973, since the 1940s the Court has gradually come to support all kinds of federal aid to private schools.

Tax deductions, busing, textbook allowances, math programs, and milk discounts are just some of the help government has offered to nonpublic schools, stipulating only that funds be used for the secular, not the religious, part of education.

I agree that this latter qualification is very difficult—if not impossible—to maintain. But the point is, the Supreme Court has upheld both direct and indirect subsidies to private Christian schools. Time and again its decisions have supported such subsidies as being fully in accord with the U.S. Constitution.

All of that presupposes a clear distinction between the secular and religious in education. I do not see how that distinction can hold up, especially with a Supreme Court that vacillates over support or nonsupport to parochial schools.

The Court has also failed to rule in education with respect to the question of free exercise. The American government requires by law, under threat of fines or imprisonment, that its citizens educate their children. But if Christians in this country have freedom by law to practice their religion, and part of that practice includes the way they educate their children, then the only practical and realistic way to permit the free exercise of religion is to enable Christians to finance for their children the kind of education that is consistent with their religion.

For them, the education of their children in biblical and moral values is an inherent part of their religious duty. To force such Christians—who are frequently too poor to finance schools on their own—to place their children in schools where they will be influenced contrary to their biblical and evangelical freedom is to deny Christians true freedom of religion and to violate the Constitution.

2. Would tuition tax credits harm public schools?

The argument posed by this question has a familiar ring. Before the American Civil War, some slave holders argued: “We cannot abolish slavery or the southern economy will suffer.” Now, abolition of slavery may have caused economic hardship in the South, but the question of slavery was not one to be answered in terms of economics. A basic human right to freedom was at stake.

Today basic parental rights and religious freedom are at stake. If tax support for public schools places a heavy financial burden on people of strong religious convictions and denies them for all practical purposes their basic parental and religious freedom, such exclusive tax support is unjust. The encouragement of parental involvement and participation in public education is beside the point. Of course Christians should involve themselves in public education systems. We all want our fellow Americans to be educated, and we want to live in a society of well-educated people. But that does not change the fact that a Christian who wants his own children instructed in Christian values ought not to be penalized because of his Christian convictions.

Evangelical Christians have a long and glorious history of support for education in America. They support public education. They want public schools to get a fair and altogether adequate share. But they do not want to be penalized because of their own Christian convictions.

3. Do tuition tax credits encourage fiscal irresponsibility?

One of the biggest bureaucracies in government today, though much is at the state and local level, is the educational bureaucracy. This is the place to start to solve the problem of too much red tape and government spending in education. Proper pluralization of education would take its agents and principals out of government hands and place them in those where it belongs, thus restoring responsibility to the parents, who had it first.

The fact is, private Christian education is one of the most productive educational investments. As every study proves, dollar for dollar, money used in private Christian schools brings a higher quality of education to children than equal amounts spent in public school. Every bit of evidence at our disposal indicates that government funds spent in a diversity of schools would be a tremendous educational bargain for the United States. If the

American people want the best education for the least outlay of money, they had better move quickly to massive support of a diversity of equitably funded schools.

4. Would tuition tax credits cause division and hostility?

Division and hostility already exist in education. It began when Catholic schools were first cut out of adequate proportioned funding. Divisiveness is caused by secular humanists, Protestants, or any group that forces a majority opinion on the schools, denying attention or educational opportunity to any who disagree. Injustice, not Christian values, is the root of bitterness and hostility. And if we wish social peace in our nation, we had better begin to structure our education system so that Christians can train their children early on in the simple virtues and biblical values of truth telling, purity, the sacredness of life, the law of God, the holiness and love of God, divine judgment upon evil, and the beauty of divine and human grace. And others should be free to educate their children as they think best.

Moreover, experience proves a charge of divisiveness is false. Most schools in Great Britain are private schools supported largely by government through direct subsidies. There is no noticeable evidence that this leads to divisiveness in that nation. In many European countries, schools are financed by the government but may be affiliated with one church or another—usually Lutheran, Reformed, or Roman Catholic. But the citizens there are not noted today for their religious divisiveness, and their schools do not create such conflict.

We do not advocate direct subsidy of schools as such. We do advocate that the government furnish education for a child that will enable that child’s parents to provide an education consistent with their religious convictions and not force them practically to educate their children in accord with a philosophy of education that is antagonistic to their Christian convictions.

5. Will tuition tax credits invite government intervention?

The point must be made that, ideally, government ought not to own or intervene in any of our nation’s schools. It does not have prior right to control these agents. The greatest government intervention today is in public schools it owns and operates and into which most children are driven by financial pressure. By restricting tax money to government-operated schools it forces a practical government monopoly on education.

If we are trying to get rid of government intervention, let’s start here—by restructuring the whole system of education in a proper pluralistic society instead of trying to hold back a monstrous power that is greedy for control of even more of our schools.

Freedom is a precious but frail possession. We must battle for religious and educational freedom as for all other basic freedoms of human life.

Dr. Puckett’s Rebuttal:

Public education is not the responsibility of parents: it is the responsibility of citizens. As a citizen, I am paying taxes to support the public school system. As a parent, I am paying tuition to send my daughters to Baptist universities. If it is only parents who should pay for education, what role should childless couples or single adults play in our system? But public education is a service to, and therefore the obligation of, the country’s entire constituency.

Public education is required by law to serve every child who seeks entrance to its schools, including the handicapped, special education cases, and those with discipline problems. Many private schools, on the other hand, find themselves incapable of dealing with special problems, and end up shunting them into the public schools.

Recognition of equal agents in education can only lead to further fragmentation in our society along religious, cultural, and philosophic lines. Implementation of tax credits will only intensify the divisiveness that may already exist under the present system.

I agree with Dr. Skillen: the use of federal funds for the secular portion of private education is a crucial issue. I maintain that any aid given to a religious institution is indirect aid to its religious dimension. When you give $500,000 to a school for a science building to be used in its secular function you theoretically release $500,000 of that institution’s resources for a chapel or a religious program. Of course we must stress the freedom to practice our faith as we see it. But that does not mean the government must finance it.

Furthermore, to repeat my earlier statement, the problem in our schools is not caused by the system. The problem is largely the fault of uninterested and inactive parents. My wife and I are actively involved in public education—perhaps even more so since our girls are in private schools. We have participated in PTA, counseling sessions, and programs that help students in history and culture.

Religious instruction belongs first in the home, then in the church. The function of public education is to prepare students to act intelligently as citizens in society. Any religious dimension in education is the responsibility of parents and the church. As such it should be provided and paid for by them.

How To Choose A Christian School

CHRISTIAN PARENTS who wish to place their children in Christian elementary schools often face a tough question: Will the Christian school really provide my child with a good education, or will I be handicapping my child for life by enrolling him/her in it?

The following check list was adapted from an article in Eternity (Sept. 1980; used by permission) to enable parents to arrive at an intelligent, informed answer to this question.

1. In what ways does the school combine Christianity and learning?

Answers will range from required chapel to seeking God’s truth in all subjects.

2. What is the average number of years the faculty has been teaching?

Look for some seasoned veteran teachers, not a whole staff just out of college.

3. Are teachers required to accept the authority of Scripture?

What kinds of interpretive latitude are allowed?

4. Must all children come from Christian homes, or are some non-Christian homes represented?

Some parents prefer a mix, especially since it may indicate a respect for the academic standards of the school.

5. What rules are children expected to follow?

Watch for any wide variation between home and school and note if your individual child will respond favorably or unfavorably.

6. What percentage of last year’s students are returning this year?

7. Does the school regularly give standardized achievement tests at each grade level?

8. How do their test scores in basic academic areas compare with scores at other schools in the community?

Most private schools will score higher because of the homes and relative affluence of the parents.

9. Are there any programs for advanced placement or challenge for exceptional students?

10. Are there specially trained personnel (often provided through the public school system for private schools) for the handicapped child?

11. Who controls the school? If it is a board, who is on the board? If a church, what is it like?

12. Is there a denominational or sectarian emphasis in the religious teaching?

13. Are the teachers certified by the state or working toward it?

14. How much involvement are the parents expected to have in the life of the school?

15. Is the school a part of a national association of schools or a state association of secondary schools?

16. Is the school accredited or registered with the state education department?

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