Tuition tax credit warnings

President Reagan can say he fulfilled a campaign promise by sending Congress legislation to provide tuition tax credits for parents of children in parochial or other nonpublic schools. But if he is wise he will not do what he reportedly said: mobilize the full resources of the White House to get the bill passed.

This would be a dubious diversion from more urgent matters, especially in the face of concern about the cost of the bill's tax break by such a four-square Republican as Senator Dole. But, more important, the proposed credits, as often argued in these pages, raise such questions of church and state - and of equity to taxpayers without children in private schools - that they should not be sent to Congress in the first place.