STATEMENT OF POLICY ON TAX CREDIT BILL

The American Federation of Teachers, AFL-CIO, has over the years supported legislation for the benefit of all the children attending schools in our country. In many cases, we have been alone among education organizations in pursuing positive programs for both public and private (whether religious or secular) schools. We have also been alone in our insistence that both public and private education can benefit without disadvantaging each other.

The AFT, by referendum, supports the compromise that lies at the heart of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. This compromise permits private school children to participate in the services funded through ESEA. The law has allowed approximately $128 on the average for every child in public schools and approximately $65 for each child in private schools.

Included in President Carter's current education bill are proposals that are expected to enhance the participation of private schools without violating the basic ESEA concept. We believe that the AFT position is more useful now than at any time in the past. We reaffirm our support for this position; however, we call attention to a threat on the horizon which could lead to severe erosion in public support for our educational system: the Proposal to permit tax credits for tuition-related expenses including elementary and secondary private school tuitions.

The Senate Finance Committee has reported a bill that will provide up to $500 in tax credits for private school tuition. The AFT strongly opposes this legislation and urges its affiliates to do likewise. Such a bill will be detrimental to the future of the public school system in that it would encourage growth of private education at the expense of the public schools. This bill would literally turn the federal role in education upside-down by authorizing four times as many federal dollars for private education as for public education. A $500 tax credit could be the beginning of the end for public schools, marking the beginning of massive outpouring of federal dollars for private education. The tax credit would spawn a proliferation of schools based on political, cultural and economic differences in our society. The role of public schools as a unifying force and as an instrument of social mobility would be ended.

While opposing tax credits the AFT will continue to support ESEA-type aid and proposals for aid to private schools that are consistent with the ESEA concept.

Tax credits do not fall within those bounds. Within a few years of enactment, we could expect the public schools to have greater and greater concentrations of those children who are the most expensive to educate, such as children with learning disabilities, the mentally and physically handicapped and educationally disadvantaged children. Private schools are not and, probably under the Constitution, cannot be compelled to admit all of the children within the community as a matter of right. By utilizing this tax credit to support their operations, private schools could absorb many children who are currently in public schools while leaving behind the children most difficult to educate. This would result in increasing financial pressures on the public schools at the very same time that their financial base is being eroded as primarily middle-class parents take their children, and with them their loyalties, out of the public school systems. The tax credit proposal, because of these consequences, would be devastating to the public schools. We cannot permit such a measure to be enacted and we will use all of our resources to see that it does not.