Joseph L. Conn’s Commentary on tuition tax credits (“Making Private Schools ‘More Equal,”’ Education Week, Nov. 16, 1983) includes common non sequiturs used in this debate. For instance, Mr. Conn complains that such credits are unfair to public-school students. Yet the status quo today is unfair. Private-school parents are being taxed to support public-school students while their own children are receiving no help at all from the government. Tuition tax credits would transform an unfair situation into a more equitable one.
Mr. Conn also says these credits would hurt poor families. The fact of the matter is that this would be a godsend to many poor families who would love to send their children to private schools but cannot afford to do so. The bulk of families in parochial schools today, according to a recent study, are middle- and lower-income families. As the principal of one private school, I can say that most of our families are from such economic strata and that more families would send their children here if they had the help of such credits.
Gerald McDermott Principal Park Christian School Moorhead, Minn.
Clarification
In John C. Esty’s letter to the editor (“Why State Regulation of Private Schools Has Not Been a Success,” Education Week, Dec. 7, 1983), a word was inadvertantly omitted from the last sentence in the second-to-last paragraph. The sentence should have read: “It makes little sense to think that state regulation can engender good citizenship when poverty never even gives it a chance.”
