Public Funding for Private Schools In recent years there has been much debate conc

In recent years there has been much debate concerning the use of public funding to finance the costs of private schools. This issue has galvanized both camps. Proponents believe that the public school system is broken, and that only by providing private schools with public funding can America's students reach their potential. Opponents argue that the last thing we need to do is divert funding from our already overstretched public school systems. This paper will outline the highlights of both sets of arguments.

The idea of using public funding to finance private schooling originated in the late 1950s. Influential economist Milton Friedman "proposed to offer public funds to families that could be used only for education but in any educational institution, public or private. Such "vouchers" would serve to give families increased choice of the kind of education their children received" (Carnoy, 6). Friedman believed that vouchers could break what he saw as the monopoly of the public sector over education. In doing so, vouchers would increase the choice of consumers in the education market, thereby augmenting the economic welfare of all Americans.

The most strident critics today have advanced the idea of public monopoly even further, comparing our public school systems to soviet era bureaucracies: "This monopoly in our own midst is one that abhors initiative and rewards mediocrity. It's enormously wasteful, top-heavy, and bureaucratic. Many aspects of it are dest

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school vouchers as being massively unfair and even un-American. There are a wide variety of school choice programs in existence. When the government makes direct payments either to parents or to schools, these programs are referred to as voucher programs. Other school choice programs are based on tax credits, where parents pay the private school a fee which is then deducted from their state or federal tax liability. There is also a distinction between conditional and universal voucher programs. Conditional voucher programs tie the issuance of vouchers to some benchmark. For example, some programs are based on the status of the local school district, allowing parents to use vouchers if their public school is not meeting expectations. Others issue vouchers to families that fall below a certain income level. Universal voucher programs, on the other hand, are just that. They are available to all children in the public school system, regardless of their parents' income or the perceived quality of their local public school" (Omand, 3). Lastly, The Supreme Court sanctioned school vouchers in its landmark ruling, Zelmon v. Simmons-Harris. The Justices ruled that school choice plans were broadly constitutional, and that pu

Category: Government - P