Mary, Where are U

The debate over whether or not the United States government should grant tuition vouchers to the parents of children who attend private schools has gone on for many years, and has included many powerful arguments on both sides of the issue. Those who support the private school vouchers believe that they are beneficial to everyone because they promote productivity in both public and private schools alike, and they also give low-income families the chance to give their children a quality private school education. Those in opposition to the vouchers say that they will drain money out of the public schools, and that they only truly help a small population, mainly the wealthy and advantaged.

Opposers also believe that the vouchers interfere with the Separation of Church and State, since many private schools have a religious affiliation. This issue has truly been a controversial one, with many people fighting arduously. After reading through the various arguments for each side, one can not help but come to 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 is that they all promote giving households that send their children to private schools a tax dollar-funded voucher that would cover all or most of the cost of the school's tuition. Many of the proposals also include the right for parents to chose which private school their child will attend. The vouchers allows students to use the money that would be subsidized for them in a public school to go toward a private 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 the voucher plan. In his 1962 book, Capitalism and Freedom, when Friedman discusses 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 schools would now have to contend with the private schools that were receiving the same payments they were. Friedman believes that,

"most dissatisfied parents have only two options. They can enroll their children in private schools, in which case they have to bear the costs in addition to paying taxes to support public schools. Or they can resort to political action, an option Friedman regards as ineffective." (ibid.)

After Friedman publicly showed his support for school vouchers, a debate began