Cite as: 521 U. S. 203 (1997)
Opinion of the Court
kind" aid (e. g., instructional materials) that could be used to teach religion and by freeing up money for religious indoctrination that the school would otherwise have devoted to secular education. Given the holdings in Meek and Wolman, the Shared Time program—which provided teachers as well as instructional equipment and materials—was surely invalid. 473 U. S., at 395. The Ball Court likewise placed no weight on the fact that the program was provided to the student rather than to the school. Nor was the impermissible effect mitigated by the fact that the program only supplemented the courses offered by the parochial schools. Id., at 395- 397.
The New York City Title I program challenged in Aguilar closely resembled the Shared Time program struck down in Ball, but the Court found fault with an aspect of the Title I program not present in Ball: The Board had "adopted a system for monitoring the religious content of publicly funded Title I classes in the religious schools." 473 U. S., at 409. Even though this monitoring system might prevent the Title I program from being used to inculcate religion, the Court concluded, as it had in Lemon and Meek, that the level of monitoring necessary to be "certain" that the program had an exclusively secular effect would "inevitably resul[t] in the excessive entanglement of church and state," thereby running afoul of Lemon's third prong. 473 U. S., at 409; see Lemon, 403 U. S., at 619 (invalidating Rhode Island program on entanglement grounds because "[a] comprehensive, discriminating, and continuing state surveillance will inevitably be required to ensure that th[e] restrictions [against indoctrination] are obeyed"); Meek, supra, at 370 (invalidating Pennsylvania program on entanglement grounds because excessive monitoring would be required for the State to be certain that public school officials do not inculcate religion). In the majority's view, New York City's Title I program suffered from the "same critical elements of entanglement" present in Lemon and Meek: the aid was provided "in a per-
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