It's funny whenever folks start pushing something as an easy solution to problems. It rarely works out that way.
Vouchers, as proposed in the legislature, will not improve our education system. It probably won't even help the pocketbooks of those who take advantage of them in the long run.
Anyone who has watched what pouring federal money into higher education has done over the last four decades should know what is coming. Once the folks at Hockaday, St. Marks, Country Day, and the other top private schools realize that their parents have $10,000 per child more to spend, they will raise tuition in order to improve their offerings, whether for new facilities, new courses, higher teacher pay (private schools usually pay less than public); not that I blame them for that, as it is a natural market response. The next schools down the chain will follow suit.
Education is a lot like healthcare, in that people don't necessarily seek out the cheapest option; in fact, with education, folks often seek out the most expensive option figuring it is the best. A lot of private schools make do with limited facilities and offerings, but if there money is there to improve facilities and offerings, they are going to do that rather than having that $10,000 burn a hole in the pockets of the parents who are already spending money to go to private schools.
Over time, that $10,000 from the state will all be eaten up by inflation as described, above. Meantime, the next time money is tight for the legislature, where will they cut back? On vouchers, or on public school spending? If voucher advocates control the legislature, you can bet it will be the latter. That is what concerns rural school district residents.
If we subsidize private education, and make it so that anyone in the cities who cares about the education of their children sends their kids to private schools, then cutting public school funding will be one of the first options in a budget crunch. Public schools, by and large, actually work in our rural areas. They don't want or need a private option. They know that the urban areas have the votes, and understandably fear the creation of a dual school system, where urban middle class and upper class kids go to private schools, while the urban poor and rural kids are the only ones left in public schools.
Now, if private school tuition inflates as I expect it will, there may be some self correction there, and middle class urban parents may find that they still can't afford good private schools, so we might avoid the kind of dual system that would pose an existential threat to public education. But, if that is how it plays out, then vouchers will be nothing more than a subsidy which ends up doing something that nobody wants, which is simply to increase the price of private education.
Public schools have provided ample evidence that merely throwing money at a problem is not a solution, yet that is exactly what voucher advocates are proposing; only they want the money thrown at private schools rather than public schools. It won't work in either case.
