Opinion of the Court ing or inhibiting religion, and the nature of that inquiry has remained largely unchanged. See Witters, 474 U. S., at 485– 486; Bowen v. Kendrick, 487 U. S. 589, 602-604 (1988) (concluding that Adolescent Family Life Act had a secular purpose); Board of Ed. of Westside Community Schools (Dist. 66) v. Mergens, 496 U. S. 226, 248-249 (1990) (concluding that Equal Access Act has a secular purpose); cf. Edwards v. Aguillard, 482 U. S. 578 (1987) (striking down Louisiana law that required creationism to be discussed with evolution in public schools because the law lacked a legitimate secular purpose). Likewise, we continue to explore whether the aid has the "effect" of advancing or inhibiting religion. What has changed since we decided Ball and Aguilar is our understanding of the criteria used to assess whether aid to religion has an impermissible effect. 1 As we have repeatedly recognized, government inculcation of religious beliefs has the impermissible effect of advancing religion. Our cases subsequent to Aguilar have, however, modified in two significant respects the approach we use to assess indoctrination. First, we have abandoned the presumption erected in Meek and Ball that the placement of public employees on parochial school grounds inevitably results in the impermissible effect of state-sponsored indoctrination or constitutes a symbolic union between government and religion. In Zobrest v. Catalina Foothills School Dist., 509 U. S. 1 (1993), we examined whether the IDEA, 20 U.S. C. § 1400 et seq., was constitutional as applied to a deaf student who sought to bring his state-employed signlanguage interpreter with him to his Roman Catholic high school. We held that this was permissible, expressly disavowing the notion that "the Establishment Clause [laid] down [an] absolute bar to the placing of a public employee in a sectarian school." 509 U. S., at 13. "Such a flat rule, smacking of antiquated notions of 'taint,' would indeed exalt Opinion of the Court form over substance." Ibid. We refused to presume that a publicly employed interpreter would be pressured by the pervasively sectarian surroundings to inculcate religion by "add[ing] to [or] subtract[ing] from" the lectures translated. Ibid. In the absence of evidence to the contrary, we assumed instead that the interpreter would dutifully discharge her responsibilities as a full-time public employee and comply with the ethical guidelines of her profession by accurately translating what was said. Id., at 12. Because the only government aid in Zobrest was the interpreter, who was herself not inculcating any religious messages, no government indoctrination took place and we were able to conclude that "the provision of such assistance [was] not barred by the Establishment Clause." Id, at 13. Zobrest therefore expressly rejected the notion-relied on in Ball and Aguilarthat, solely because of her presence on private school property, a public employee will be presumed to inculcate religion in the students. Zobrest also implicitly repudiated another assumption on which Ball and Aguilar turned: that the presence of a public employee on private school property creates an impermissible "symbolic link" between government and religion. JUSTICE SOUTER contends that Zobrest did not undermine the "presumption of inculcation" erected in Ball and Aguilar, and that our conclusion to the contrary rests on a "mistaken reading" of Zobrest. Post, at 248 (dissenting opinion). In his view, Zobrest held that the Establishment Clause tolerates the presence of public employees in sectarian schools "only . . . in . . . limited circumstances"-i. e., when the employee "simply translates for one student the material presented to the class for the benefit of all students." Post, at 249. The sign-language interpreter in Zobrest is unlike the remedial instructors in Ball and Aguilar because signing, JUSTICE SOUTER explains, “[cannot] be understood as an opportunity to inject religious content in what [is] supposed to be secular instruction." Post, at 248-249. He is thus able to conclude that Zobrest is distinguishable Opinion of the Court from-and therefore perfectly consistent with-Ball and Aguilar. In Zobrest, however, we did not expressly or implicitly rely upon the basis JUSTICE SOUTER now advances for distinguishing Ball and Aguilar. If we had thought that signers had no “opportunity to inject religious content” into their translations, we would have had no reason to consult the record for evidence of inaccurate translations. 509 U. S., at 13. The signer in Zobrest had the same opportunity to inculcate religion in the performance of her duties as do Title I employees, and there is no genuine basis upon which to confine Zobrest's underlying rationale-that public employees will not be presumed to inculcate religion—to signlanguage interpreters. Indeed, even the Zobrest dissenters acknowledged the shift Zobrest effected in our Establishment Clause law when they criticized the majority for "stray[ing] . . . from the course set by nearly five decades of Establishment Clause jurisprudence." Id., at 24 (Blackmun, J., dissenting). Thus, it was Zobrest-and not this litigation that created "fresh law." Post, at 249. Our refusal to limit Zobrest to its facts despite its rationale does not, in our view, amount to a "misreading" of precedent. Second, we have departed from the rule relied on in Ball that all government aid that directly assists the educational function of religious schools is invalid. In Witters v. Washington Dept. of Servs. for Blind, 474 U. S. 481 (1986), we held that the Establishment Clause did not bar a State from issuing a vocational tuition grant to a blind person who wished to use the grant to attend a Christian college and become a pastor, missionary, or youth director. Even though the grant recipient clearly would use the money to obtain religious education, we observed that the tuition grants were "made available generally without regard to the sectariannonsectarian, or public-nonpublic nature of the institution benefited.'" Id., at 487 (quoting Committee for Public Ed. & Religious Liberty v. Nyquist, 413 U. S. 756, 782-783, Opinion of the Court n. 38 (1973)). The grants were disbursed directly to students, who then used the money to pay for tuition at the educational institution of their choice. In our view, this transaction was no different from a State's issuing a paycheck to one of its employees, knowing that the employee would donate part or all of the check to a religious institution. In both situations, any money that ultimately went to religious institutions did so "only as a result of the genuinely independent and private choices of" individuals. 474 U. S., at 487. The same logic applied in Zobrest, where we allowed the State to provide an interpreter, even though she would be a mouthpiece for religious instruction, because the IDEA's neutral eligibility criteria ensured that the interpreter's presence in a sectarian school was a "result of the private decision of individual parents" and "[could not] be attributed to state decisionmaking." 509 U. S., at 10 (emphasis added). Because the private school would not have provided an interpreter on its own, we also concluded that the aid in Zobrest did not indirectly finance religious education by "reliev[ing] [the] sectarian schoo[1] of costs [it] otherwise would have borne in educating [its] students." Id., at 12. Zobrest and Witters make clear that, under current law, the Shared Time program in Ball and New York City's Title I program in Aguilar will not, as a matter of law, be deemed to have the effect of advancing religion through indoctrination. Indeed, each of the premises upon which we relied in Ball to reach a contrary conclusion is no longer valid. First, there is no reason to presume that, simply because she enters a parochial school classroom, a full-time public employee such as a Title I teacher will depart from her assigned duties and instructions and embark on religious indoctrination, any more than there was a reason in Zobrest to think an interpreter would inculcate religion by altering her translation of classroom lectures. Certainly, no evidence has ever shown that any New York City Title I instructor teaching on parochial school premises attempted to inculcate religion in stu Opinion of the Court dents. National Coalition for Public Ed. & Religious Liberty v. Harris, 489 F. Supp. 1248, 1262, 1267 (SDNY 1980); Felton v. Secretary, United States Dept. of Ed., 739 F. 2d, at 53, aff'd sub nom. Aguilar v. Felton, 473 U. S. 402 (1985). Thus, both our precedent and our experience require us to reject respondents' remarkable argument that we must presume Title I instructors to be "uncontrollable and sometimes very unprofessional." Tr. of Oral Arg. 39. As discussed above, Zobrest also repudiates Ball's assumption that the presence of Title I teachers in parochial school classrooms will, without more, create the impression of a "symbolic union" between church and state. JUSTICE SOUTER maintains that Zobrest is not dispositive on this point because Aguilar's implicit conclusion that New York City's Title I program created a "symbolic union" rested on more than the presence of Title I employees on parochial school grounds. Post, at 250. To him, Title I continues to foster a "symbolic union" between the Board and sectarian schools because it mandates "the involvement of public teachers in the instruction provided within sectarian schools," ibid., and "fus[es] public and private faculties," post, at 254. JUSTICE SOUTER does not disavow the notion, uniformly adopted by lower courts, that Title I services may be provided to sectarian school students in off-campus locations, post, at 246-247, even though that notion necessarily presupposes that the danger of "symbolic union" evaporates once the services are provided off campus. Taking this view, the only difference between a constitutional program and an unconstitutional one is the location of the classroom, since the degree of cooperation between Title I instructors and parochial school faculty is the same no matter where the services are provided. We do not see any perceptible (let alone dispositive) difference in the degree of symbolic union between a student receiving remedial instruction in a classroom on his sectarian school's campus and one receiving instruction in a van parked just at the school's curbside. To draw this line based solely on |