Hurricane Katrina: Back to School: Public Bailout. Private Agenda?

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But Huckabee was tutoring only 1,755 Katrina kids. Texas has 41,000, with 19,000 more expected to arrive. Those numbers left some state officials skeptical that the feds would really come through. Comptroller Carole Strayhorn, who will run against incumbent Rick Perry in the state's Republican gubernatorial primary, challenged him to ask the legislature for $1.2 billion in hurricane-related funds. (He de- clined.) Texas educators are worried that they will be punished in the form of even less federal cash if Katrina's influx keeps them from meeting the conditions of Bush's No Child Left Behind Act and an earlier law that benefits the children of the homeless.

Spellings' proposal eased those tensions while creating others, most sharply over the possible erosion of the church-and-state barrier. Her department noted that in Louisiana's flood-impacted communities, 25% of the students had been enrolled in private schools--should government simply ignore them? "We are not provoking a voucher debate," Spellings contended, "as much as trying to provide aid for these displaced families, whether they have been in private schools or public schools." Her proposal seems carefully crafted to avoid substantive constitutional objections. Although it calls for the distribution of the public-school funds primarily through districts, the private-school money is directed not to schools but to families, in keeping with the concerns of the 2002 Supreme Court decision allowing private-school vouchers so long as the parents retain a "true private choice" as to where their children learn.

Nonetheless, the proposal represents a major, if legal, shift toward government activism. According to Chester E. Finn Jr., president of the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, which promotes school reforms, the number of children receiving government money for private school is roughly 30,000, with a "handful" involving federal funds. The Spellings plan assumes roughly 60,000 federally funded private-school placements. Finn, an Assistant Education Secretary under Ronald Reagan, approves of it as "compassionate and constitutional." Andrew Rotherham, a co-director of a think tank called the Education Sector and a former Clinton education adviser, says the proposal's eventual legitimacy may depend on details Spellings has not yet made available. "As a temporary initiative to help families in exceptional circumstances, it's reasonable," he says. "But if they use this disaster as a beachhead to establish a longstanding voucher program in the Gulf [Coast] region, it would be wildly inappropriate."