Bush and Blaine

President Bush was full of ideas on Thursday at the White House Summit on Inner-City Children and Faith-Based Schools. He spoke of how the federal government offers Pell Grants to students attending religious colleges and how federal social-service money goes to faith-based social service organizations. He spoke of how, in Washington, the federally funded Opportunity Scholarship Program has helped 2,600 children attend private or parochial schools. He reiterated his proposal for a $300 million "Pell Grants for Kids" initiative that would let students opt out of failing public schools.

"Today, more than 30 state constitutions include so-called Blaine Amendments, which prohibit public support of religious schools. These amendments have their roots in 19th century anti-Catholic bigotry — and today the legacy of discrimination continues to harm low-income students of many faiths and many backgrounds. And so state lawmakers, if they're concerned about quality education for children, and if they're concerned about these schools closing, they ought to remove the Blaine Amendments," Mr. Bush said.

Here in New York, our own state Blaine Amendment and the power of the present-day public school teachers unions notwithstanding, Albany spends $139.5 million a year on aid to private schools, many of them Jewish or Catholic. More than $50 million is to cover the cost of taking attendance; other money covers computer hardware (at $12 a student a year), textbooks ($58.25 a student), computer software ($14.98 a student), and library materials ($6.25 a student), according to an article in the Jewish Week. It sounds like a lot of money, but pales beside the tens of billions in state spending on government-run schools.

The likelihood that Mr. Bush is going to win support for major federal progress on the parochial school front in the final year of his administration is slim. He would have had a better shot early in his administration, with more political capital and a Republican Congress, but he preferred a compromise to win Senator Kennedy's backing and the eventual passage of the No Child Left Behind bill. Still, stranger things have happened. Speaker Pelosi is Catholic, and the swing vote in the Senate, Joseph Lieberman, is an Orthodox Jew; both ought to understand the harm of the Blaine Amendments. This is an issue for Senator McCain to press in the coming campaign.