c. 1997 Religion News Service

UNDATED _ A controversial school voucher program in Cleveland has received two years of additional state funding, earning commendation from Roman Catholics and skepticism from the American Federation of Teachers (AFT).

Just two weeks after Ohio Gov. George Voinovich signed the law for the funding, the AFT released a report showing that vouchers do not help the poor because the programs cost more than commonly believed.

A Roman Catholic leader called the study”ludicrous,”claiming vouchers not only give families more choice in their children’s education, but also provide a viable educational alternative for children who would otherwise be stuck in deteriorating inner-city schools.”I don’t know that the AFT or anybody else knows better than a parent about educating their children,”said the Rev. Thomas J. McDade, secretary for education at the U.S. Catholic Conference.

The program, called the Cleveland Scholarship and Tutoring Program, has two major components. First, it allows qualifying low-income families to receive state-assisted”scholarships”_ or tax vouchers _ that can be used to pay tuition at private schools. Second, it offers public school students the opportunity to get additional tutoring.

The AFT study _ a 30-page document entitled”The Cleveland Voucher Program: Who Chooses? Who Gets Chosen? Who Pays?”_ argues that vouchers are expensive, draining more than $5 million in public resources in the program’s first year, with little benefit.”Basically, the Cleveland program didn’t provide much choice for the students it was intended to help,”said AFT president Sandra Feldman in a statement released with the report.”It (the program) cost more than expected, and wound up sending hundreds of public school students to new schools with little or no educational track record,”Feldman said.

Bishop Anthony M. Pilla of Cleveland _ who also is the president of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops _ strongly disagreed. In a statement, Pilla said the state-assisted scholarships cover 90 percent of tuition costs in most cases and parents could make up the remainder by providing in-kind services at the schools.

Pilla also said the pastors and principals of the 34 participating Catholic schools in the Cleveland Public School District made financial sacrifices to admit more than 1,000 new students under the voucher program.”The pastors, principals, teachers, staff and parishioners know that this program is not a means of increasing enrollment or creating an excess cash flow for the schools,”Pilla said.

Despite the financial difficulties, Pilla said families enjoy having a say in how their children are educated, and that students who participated in the voucher program”made great academic progress.” While the Catholic community continues to stand behind the program as an alternative to Cleveland’s troubled public schools, the AFT study reported only 33 percent of the 1,994 children who received vouchers in the first year came from public schools.

McDade, of the U.S. Catholic Conference, said the educational system ought to be family-directed instead of institution-directed. In other words, he said, parental choice and quality of education should be the priorities.”We are talking about children, we are talking about parents,”he said.

AMB END LEBOWITZ