The debate over whether or not the United States government shouldgrant tuition vouchers to the parents of children who attend private schools hasgone on for many years, and has included many powerful arguments on bothsides of the issue.
Those who support the private school vouchers believe thatthey are beneficial to everyone because they promote productivity in both publicand private schools alike, and they also give low-income families the chance togive their children a quality private school education. Those in opposition to thevouchers say that they will drain money out of the public schools, and that theyonly truly help a small population, mainly the wealthy and advantaged. Opposers also believe that the vouchers interfere with the Separation of Churchand State, since many private schools have a religious affiliation. This issue hastruly been a controversial one, with many people fighting arduously. Afterreading through the various arguments for each side, one can not help but cometo their own conclusion about private school vouchers. There have been many school voucher programs proposed in the past,but they all seem to share one common theme.
This similarity between them isthat they all promote giving households that send their children to private schoolsa tax dollar-funded voucher that would cover all or most of the cost of theschool’s tuition. Many of the proposals also include the right for parents to chosewhich private school their child will attend. The vouchers allows students to usethe money that would be subsidized for them in a public school to go toward aprivate school education. This system redirects the flow of educational funding,bringing it to the individual family instead of the school district. The idea of school vouchers first became popular after Milton Friedman,an economist, released two publications, in 1956 and in 1962, that supported thevoucher plan.
In his 1962 book, Capitalism and Freedom, when Friedmandiscusses education, he turns to public education criticizes it for being”unresponsive” because it has been free from competition (Lieberman, 120). Vouchers would provide this much needed competition, since public schoolswould now have to contend with the private schools that were receiving the samepayments they were. Friedman believes that,”most dissatisfied parents have only two options. They can enroll theirchildren in private schools, in which case they have to bear the costs inaddition to paying taxes to support public schools. Or they can resort topolitical action, an option Friedman regards as ineffective. ” (ibid.
)After Friedman publicly showed his support for school vouchers, a debate beganin America, with fellow supporters and the opposers announcing their views onthe issue. People on both sides of this issue have been very vocal over the years,explaining why they think school vouchers should or should not be implementedin American schools. In arguing about the same point in the debate, like thedecline in the quality of public schools or the separation of church and state,each group has found a way to make it fit into their beliefs. Therefore, nothing isever accomplished because the groups blame each other for any problemsinvolved with the vouchers that may arise.
Besides the two points listed above,minority education and low-income student education have also been used aspowerful arguments both for and against private school vouchers.The
