Millions of Americans subscribe to a world view made up of six elements.  

• (1) Humans are created by a loving God to praise Him and serve Him in this mortal life and to find complete happiness and personal fulfilment with Him in a far better and never ending life to follow.  
• (2) God gives parents  their offspring in part that they may teach them to live worthily  with an eye to the world to come. 
• (3) Parents, not governments,  have the primary responsibility for educating their children. 
• (4) If various levels of American government can legitimately demand that citizens be educated in order to make democracy work, then those governments must also respect the parents' paramount right to chose the details of how literacy, numeracy and civic competence shall be acquired by their own flesh and blood. 
• (5) Public schools, i.e., government-owned, government-managed schools, are worth preserving for those parents who wish to send their children to them but public schools are in need of serious reform.  
• (6) Governments should help all parents pay for the first class education of their children:  whether at home, in private schools, in government schools, through distance learning, neighborhood schools or parent co-operatives, however the parents elect.

Very likely, half or more  American adults hold beliefs pretty close to
(1) through (6) above. When those parents are joined by other parents who disagree about the religious assumptions (1) and (2) but endorse "secular" axioms (3) through (6), then they may well make up a combined 3/4 or more of the adult population.   Is that a potential or real power bloc? Yes it is. But can people with such beliefs ever in fact link up long enough to persuade a state, county  or city government to do meaningful funding of children's education K-12 in private schools of parents' choosing?

Government-funded public education for grades K -12 in America  now costs over over $300 billion a year. How many Americans would like a sizable slice of that re-directed into private schooling? An August 1997 Gallup poll estimated that 52% of parents with children in public schools would place their offspring in private schools if  they could afford to, while a much higher number of of black families--72%-- now support school choice.

In Arizona such a re-allocation of spending for education will begin on January 1, 1998  when a new tax law begins to generate $50 million or more per year for private education. That will be enough to send nearly 40,000 students to non-government schools. For the average private school in Arizona costs only $1,300 per pupil per year. There is one limiting factor:  there are only about 5,000 openings in those private schools. Sixty per cent of Arizona's $5.1 billion budget now goes to public schools, which educate roughly 600,000 students. Only 30,000 attend Arizona's private schools.

On April 7, 1997 Governor Fife Symington signed into law, after its passage by both houses of the Arizona legislature HB 2074, a brief, straightforward amendment to State income taxation law.  Here is how the new law works.

--First, any Arizona taxpayer filing singly may receive a state income tax credit for up to $250/year and (and any married couple filing jointly up to $500/year) for  personal funds which they voluntarily donate during the tax year to an approved charity  which funds private schools. This tax credit is available to all Arizona taxpayers, not just parents  of children in school.

--Second, the tax credit may be carried over for up to to five years. That is, if a taxpayer contributes less than the maximum  to private schools in a given year, then the balance may be applied for the next several years.

--To benefit from the new law, an Arizona taxpayer must funnel his  or herdonation into what the law calls a "school tuition organization" (or "STO" for short). By STO  is meant any charitable organization established in Arizona and exempt from Federal taxation under section 501 (c) (3) of the internal revenue code.

--To qualify for such donations from private citizens  the private sector
School Tuition Organization must allocate 

"at least ninety percent of its annual revenue for educational scholarships or tuition grants to students without limiting availability to only students of one school."

Public schools in Arizona will also benefit in 1998 from the new law via a $200/year tax credit for parents who pay for their own children's  "extra curricular activities," defined as public school sponsored activities for which students must pay a fee:  specifically, "band uniforms, equipment or uniforms for varsity athletic activities and scientific laboratory materials."

Enemies have called the new Arizona law "fiendishly clever," because it avoids any hands-on government entanglement with religious schools. After all, the State of Arizona is simply leaving taxpayers their own money to spend as they see fit. Government is not actively redistributing tax revenues. This approach upsets those who value most about private income  its potential to be transformed into public money. To all such the Arizona story can only appear, therefore, "fiendishly clever." Other Americans, however, interpret the new law as  "divinely wise and simple." For they remember the survival techniques of wise serpents and simple doves commended in Matthew 10:16 to those about to be sent out as sheep among wolves.

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for Asheville TRIBUNE