Ohio's shame: where 'school choice' could take America.

If you want to know what might happen to America's public school system, take a look at Ohio.

According to a recent report in the Cincinnati Enquirer, the state government there spent a record $185.7 million last year for programs benefitting religious and other private schools. That's about $600 per student, a figure that the Ohio Catholic Conference says is a record for the country.

Ohio taxpayers also have the dubious distinction of footing the bill for the only voucher program that pays for tuition at religious schools. The "experimental" plan in Cleveland, which is now pending before the state supreme court, has been problem-plagued. Most recently, state auditors discovered that as much as $1.9 million may have been misspent, including $1.4 million for taxis to haul voucher students to their classes.

You read that right. Cabs were used to transport children to private schools around the city, due in part to a shortage of buses in Cleveland's public school district and in part to administrative failure.

Meanwhile, Ohio's public school system is suffering from serious neglect. The state supreme court has ruled that inequities are so great that a complete overhaul in school financing is necessary.

Furthermore, a General Accounting Office report found that Ohio ranked last among the 50 states in school building maintenance. Seventy-six percent of the state's schools had at least one inadequate building feature. Four out of five schools had at least one environmental flaw, such as poor indoor air quality.

How did all this happen?

According to the Enquirer, the state legislature is heavily influenced by private school lobbyists, especially representatives of the Roman Catholic hierarchy, which operates the vast majority of Ohio's nonpublic schools.

The newspaper said parochial school interests first tapped the public treasury in 1966 when a $26-million bus subsidy was enacted. Since then, additional programs have been added as politics and the courts have allowed.

All of this should be an object lesson for the rest of America. When politicians give sectarian lobbies the keys to the fisc, serious problems are sure to ensue.

That brings us to Congress. In recent weeks, two measures have been approved to lend government assistance to religious and other private schooling. The House passed S. 1502, a Senate-endorsed bill that would se? up a "scholarship" plait to subsidize nonpublic education in the District of Columbia. The Senate, meanwhile, approved H.R. 2646, Sen. Paul Coverdell's Religious Right-backed plait to give tax incentives for IRA-style education savings accounts.

In both cases, advocates of these measures depicted them as small steps that simply give parents greater educational choice. This is shameless propaganda that should be rejected out of hand.

These bills have one goal, and that's to open a small stream of public support for private religious schooling. Voucher advocates know that once set in the place, the trickling stream can be widened into a raging torrent. Just look at the example of Ohio.

During the floor debate in Congress, Sen. John Glenn (D-Ohio), a strong supporter of public schools arid church-state separation, warned that the Coverdell plan is "a toe in the door for the ruination of our public school system." As The Christian Science Monitor put it, "Broad approaches that shift resources arid reform efforts away from public education are not sound options."

Fortunately, President Bill Clinton has promised to veto both the D.C. voucher scheme and the Coverdell bill when those measures make their way to his desk. That's certainly welcome news, but it doesn't detract from the sad fact that majorities in both houses of Congress (and some state legislatures) dance to the tune of the Religious Right, the Catholic parochial school lobby and other forces that put their private agendas ahead of the public good.

And they have big bucks on their side. The pro-voucher American Education Reform Association spent $100,000 to tout the D.C. voucher bill. Broadcast and print advertising bashed public schools and falsely suggested African-Americans support vouchers.

In San Antonio, the Children's Education Opportunity Foundation is pumping $50 million into one city school district to encourage its largely Hispanic student body to transfer to Catholic and other private schools, thus building a constituency for tax-funded voucher schemes in the future.

In fact, black and Hispanic parents, like most other Americans, want a strong public school system. They know that the majority of their children are unlikely to find the education they need at selective private schools. Indeed, none of us should forget that vouchers were first used in the United States to subsidize private academies set up in the South to maintain racial segregation. (The federal courts struck the voucher schemes down.)

The fight for public schools and church-state separation won't be easy. But it's a fight we can and must win. Nothing less than the future of this country and its children is at stake. Let your elected officials know how you feel.