Publicly Funded Tuition Vouchers
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The use of government revenues to create tuition vouchers redeemable at public or private primary and secondary schools was proposed by the conservative economist Milton Friedman (1962). The idea of using publicly funded tuition vouchers to finance education, which had a long history before Friedman gave it new life, has assumed a number of guises over the years. Although it has received limited attention from those actually charged with solving the problems of financing education, the voucher concept has received support at various times from concerned parents and educators on the political Left and the political Right (Krashinsky, 1986). Because it promises great freedom in education, the educational voucher remains an attractive idea. Considered to be similar in many respects to educational tax credit programs, a voucher system is even less likely than such programs to be put into operation. Practical and theoretical difficulties with its implementation have prevented the general acceptance of a voucher system for financing education (Peterson, 1983). An educational voucher system is conceived as a way of fostering excellence in education by encouraging healthy competition among schools. In its simplest form, such a system would provide parents with a fixed amount for each child to use for enrolling the child at the school of their choice, public or private. In that way, good schools would prosper and bad schools would go bankrupt. In theory, a voucher system wou
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ce obvious inequities.
Vouchers are not an exclusive property of political conservatives. A liberal version of an educational voucher system was proposed by Christopher Jencks (Jencks, 1966; Areen & Jencks, 1971). Eschewing the extreme laissez-faire ideology that animated Friedman's voucher proposals, Jencks and his colleagues have presented vouchers as a way to make schools more diverse and more responsive. The "reformist" voucher system includes a complex system of regulations intended to reduce the potential for abuse. Operating from premises in near opposition to those that motivate conservative voucher advocates, proponents of a reform voucher system see an extensive regulatory element as an essential part of any voucher system: ". . . an unregulated voucher system could be the most serious setback for the education of disadvantaged children in the history of the United States" (Areen & Jencks, 1971, p. 332). Under a reformed voucher system, parents would not be permitted to make additional financial contributions to schools; schools could not turn away applicants as long as there was space for them; a lottery would be used to determine who was entitled to space in desirable schools if demand exceeded supply.
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Some common words found in the essay are:
Areen Jencks, Milton Friedman, Education Secretary, Hoffer Kilgore, Literature Review, Conclusions Recommendations, voucher system, According Jencks, Purpose Study, College Record, private schools, Illinois Peterson, krashinsky 1986, educational voucher, public schools, public private, voucher program, educational voucher system, raywid 1987, areen jencks 1971, educational system, areen jencks, implementation voucher system, public private schools, american educational system,
Approximate Word count = 3147
Approximate Pages = 13 (250 words per page)
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