Question: What are vouchers?
For decades parents have had no choice when confronted with a failing school. Their only option was to continue sending a child to a bad school or move to a neighborhood which has good schools. Vouchers are an attempt to redress that situation by channeling public funds in scholarships or vouchers so that children have the option of attending private school. Needless to say it has the public education folks in a swivet.
Answer: Scholarships or payment for education at a private or parochial K-12 school.
Vouchers are another name for programs which offer parents the option to remove their children from failing public schools and enroll them in private schools. These programs take the form of vouchers or outright cash for private schools, tax credits, tax deductions and contributions to tax deductible education accounts.
Funding for vouchers comes from private and government sources. Government funded voucher programs are very controversial for two main reasons. In the opinion of some they raise the consitutional issues of separation of church and state when funding is given for education at parochial and other religious schools. For others the challenge to public education goes to the core of another widely held belief: that every child is entitled to a 'free' education.
Against Vouchers
The most vociferous opponents to vouchers are members of the entrenched educational bureaucracy. The National Education Association becomes enraged at the thought of any public funds, no matter how miniscule, being spent on something other than public education. To better understand the NEA or, indeed, any segment of the education bureaucracy in this country, imagine a very large fuel inefficient SUV which has to fill up every time it passes a gas station. The NEA's view is that we ought to throw more money at bad schools. But giving parents school choices is un-American.
The American Federation of Teachers asserts solemnly in its Voucher Fact Sheet that "no credible evidence has shown that vouchers raise student achievement".
Opposition to vouchers also implies that our Constitution, Mom and apple pie are being mocked. God forbid that we should spend money from the public treasury on Catholic or Christian schools. That's even more un-American than allowing parents freedom to choose good schools. (I'll leave Mother and the apple pie to the side for now!)
For Vouchers
The argument for vouchers is sublimely simple: let my kids have a chance at a decent education by allowing them to go to a good school without it costing me a fortune.
As to the argument that we are robbing public schools of the badly needed funds, that is specious at best. The amount of funding allocated in Milwaukee and Cleveland is miniscule.
Resources
Do Vouchers Work
Supreme Court Upholds Cleveland Voucher Program
School Choice: For Some or For All?
National Education Association
American Federation of Teachers
