Education in America: The Tuition Voucher Issue

The idea of the voucher and the voucher program has been around since 1955 when free-market economist Milton Friedman "suggested that the government give parents who sent their child to a private school the same amount of money as that spent on a public school student."[1] The movement, however, wouldn't gain ground until the 1980's when the U.S. Department of Education turned a critical eye on America's education system and found it sorely lacking. According to a report entitled A Nation at Risk released by the agency, "America's public schools had so deteriorated that the country's economic, industrial, and technological future was in jeopardy."[2] The educational system was thrown into a tailspin that caused, over the course next ten years, educational standards to be raised and led to attacks on the public school system in general. It was during this period that the voucher movement made a come back.[3]

The voucher programs that made a showing at that time, which we still see lobbying for today, weren't exactly Friedman's voucher program. Essentially, they were designed to use taxpayer money, which had typically been set aside for public education, to pay for "part or all of a child's tuition at a parochial or other private school."[4] Unlike Friedman's ideal, today's vouchers are supposed to offer parents the opportunity to send their children to private school when they might not otherwise be able to. They are not designed to 'repay' parents who would have sent their children to public school anyway.