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Maine towns that do not have public schools provide private or public school tuition for their resident children. The program pays the cost of sending their children to a non-religious private school, either within or outside the state, or to a public school in a neighboring district of choice. The town of residence pays the tuition, capped at the average cost of educating a student in Maine’s public high schools. In the fall of 2001, 5,933 students attended private schools through this program, while 8,252 attended nearby public schools.
This system has existed in some form in the state for over 200 years. The program initially included religious as well as non-religious schools; however, in 1980, the Maine Attorney General issued an opinion indicating that the practice of paying tuition for students to attend religious schools violated the U.S. Constitution’s establishment clause. As a result, in 1981 the Maine legislature passed the current law that excludes religious schools from the tuitioning system. On October 22, 2004, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 1st District upheld this law in Eulitt v. State of Maine.
A study of the Maine and Vermont tuitioning programs has identified a range of positive impacts. These include: higher levels of academic achievement in areas where competition for students was greatest; benefits from a competitive environment that were not limited to specific demographic groups; and significant cost savings to Maine and Vermont taxpayers.
Christopher Hammonds, “ The Effects of Town Tuitioning in Maine and Vermont,” Friedman Foundation, 2002. Source: School Choice 2001: What’s Happening in the States Source: Cato Institute Briefing Papers Source: The Heritage Foundation: Introduction to School Choice
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