FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Jeff Huett | Phone: 202-544-4226 | Cell: 202-680-4127
Cherilyn Crowe | Phone: 202-544-4226 | Cell: 615-519-0620

January 26, 2011

WASHINGTON — Legislation introduced Wednesday in the U.S. House that would permit the use of school vouchers in the District of Columbia is bad policy that threatens religious liberty, says a Baptist church-state organization.

House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, and Sen. Joseph Lieberman, I-Conn., introduced the bill to reauthorize the DC voucher plan ahead of a White House push for education reform this year. The plan would provide taxpayer money in the form of vouchers to attend private schools, including religious ones. 

K. Hollyn Hollman, general counsel for the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty, applauded the attention that education reform is receiving on Capitol Hill, but said sending public tax dollars to private religious schools is not the answer.

“Creative responses are needed to address the problems in our public schools, but subsidizing religious education with tax money is not one of them,” Hollman said.

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She said several studies of the program, including one by the nonpartisan General Accounting Office found that school vouchers do not improve student achievement and instead betray the majority of D.C. students in public schools.

“School vouchers are a lose-lose proposition,” Hollman said. “Schools lose because much-needed funds are diverted from the public system. Students lose because some are left to languish in under-funded public schools, while voucher recipients attend schools lacking accountability to federal taxpayers.

“By funding religious schools with taxpayer money, school vouchers violate the consciences of citizens who disagree with the religious teachings of the schools,” Hollman said. “Such funding also invites governmental regulation of religious institutions, which should frighten all Americans who cherish religious liberty.”

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The Baptist Joint Committee is a 75-year-old, Washington, D.C.-based religious liberty organization that works to defend and extend God-given religious liberty for all, bringing a uniquely Baptist witness to the principle that religion must be freely exercised, neither advanced nor inhibited by government.