School vouchers impose an interesting twist on public education. Proponents of vouchers argue that the only answer for students locked in America’s failing schools is school choice. It is also widely believed that a direct reallocation of funding from the failing schools to the parents of students in these schools will enable the parents to send the students to presumably better education at a private or parochial school. The lack of competition and the captive market presumably have allowed these failing schools to atrophy, and the only means of holding schools truly accountable is to make them compete.

However, one must remember when exploring the arena of "school choice" that it is not guaranteed by a voucher program. Low-income families will find little choice, and the $1,500 voucher that Bush originally proposed for all children would not pay for tuition at a private school. Parochial school tuition may well fall within the reach of students and parents with these vouchers, however.

Another argument is undoubtedly the question of whether it is ethical to employ tax money, which is reallocated by the government, in pursuing a religious education. Clearly, this would involve direct funding of church schools and religious organizations by state funds.

Aside from the violation of the separation of church and state, there are fourteenth-amendment provisions concerning nondiscrimination that are not necessarily adhered to by all private and church-based institutions. The voucher program would effectively make these organizations agents of the state in providing students with a partially public-funded education. Clearly these violations of the constitutional rights of citizens cannot be endorsed, let alone funded, by the government. Yet vouchers would do exactly that. As a matter of fact, there are cases pending concerning schools in Milwaukee that use religious criteria for admissions policies, yet still take voucher money. This discriminatory behavior cannot be tolerated in our state-funded agencies. School vouchers cannot be the answer to the educational problems afoot in the United States today.

Many of the problems with today’s public school system can be traced back to the fact that failing schools are under-funded, and many are located in neighborhoods where they cannot attract the best and most enthusiastic teachers. The solution to the problems of these schools is not to remove their funding and divert it to school vouchers; an organization cannot be expected to perform well in a competitive market if entry into the market is tied to a drop in total revenue. Schools in areas where voucher programs are implemented inevitably lose some funding as money is diverted to voucher programs. The net result of all of this will be nothing more for students either: staying at their neighborhood public school, now with far worse funding than it ever had before, and thus far less able to provide a good education than it ever had been; or leaving their neighborhood public schools to fantasize about private or parochial schools that they can ill afford, but which will, provide them with a theoretically superior education in a theoretically unbiased and nondiscriminatory learning environment.

The truth is that there has not been any conclusive evidence that private education is in fact superior to public education. In a New York City study, the difference in standardized test scores between the two types of institutions showed no statistically significant difference in a city in which no voucher program is currently in place. In fact, both the best and worst scores are achieved in public schools, which cannot by law rule out students like their private counterparts, nor eliminate troublemakers. All these must also be viewed with the understanding that some schools in poor neighborhoods receive as little as $6000-7000 per student, while those in well-to-do districts may spend as much as over $11,000.

Indeed, in the Milwaukee experiment, fewer than 600 parents applied for the program in the 1990-1993 period, even though 1350 seats were available. Only 354 were accepted and enrolled in approved schools. By 1994, the program proved an utter failure as only 92 students remained in the program.

As can be seen, the real answers to improving education lie in providing more funding and better resources directly to the schools that need them. This would support a better educational experience, and provide far greater social benefit than would be derived from the ill-conceived reallocation of funding that we call the school voucher program.