CLEVELAND - President Bush said Monday that he will encourage every state to develop tuition voucher programs to help poor children escape failing public schools.

On a trip to Cleveland, whose 6-year-old voucher program was upheld by the Supreme Court on Thursday, Bush said the court "gave a great victory to parents and students throughout the nation." He drew thunderous applause at the historic State Theatre from 3,000 people, many of whom are from the inner-city communities where vouchers are popular.

The court's 5-4 ruling validated a Cleveland program that gives as much as $2,250 a year to parents to help them pay tuition and other costs at private schools, including schools with religious affiliation. The court said the funds do not violate a constitutional ban on promoting religion.

The president compared the ruling to the historic Brown vs. Board of Education decision in 1954 outlawing "separate but equal" schools that segregated white and black students.

Bush has long supported the idea of vouchers, although he had dropped the words from his speech vocabulary because it set off arguments. He dropped the voucher part of his education bill in order to get it passed.

Opponents say voucher programs threaten public schools because they siphon off taxpayers' money.

"It is a constructive approach to improving public education," Bush said. "We're interested in aiming toward excellence for every child, and the voucher system is a part of the strategy."

He called on Congress to pass a $2,500-per-child education tax credit for families whose children leave failing public schools for private schools. The five-year, $3.5 billion proposal would cover tuition, books, computers, other supplies and transportation. That proposal, a top goal of conservatives, has little chance of being enacted in an election year because of strong opposition by teachers' unions and civil liberties groups.

The Rev. Barry Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, criticized Bush's proposal.

"There's nothing compassionate about forcing Americans to support religion," he said. "There's nothing conservative about requiring people to pay for religious indoctrination."

Today Bush visits Milwaukee, which has the nation's largest school voucher program. This year, more than 10,000 children from poor families attend private schools using vouchers.

Florida has the only other voucher program, started in 1999 by Gov. Jeb Bush, the president's brother. Eight thousand children participate in 10 public school districts around the state.

In Washington, the Education Department released estimates that there are 3.5 million students nationwide - nearly 7% of public school enrollment - attending about 8,600 failing public schools.

The president's trip Monday, his seventh to Ohio, opened a week of travel to important political states. He lost narrowly to Al Gore in 2000 in Wisconsin. The Fourth of July trip to West Virginia will be Bush's fourth to the traditionally Democratic state, which Bush won.