I like to believe that the intentions behind vouchers are good, and not just blind execution of Friedman’s ideology, but the law of unintended consequences is a doozey here.

On a different subject, I like your argument about federal assistance for _adults_ at private (religious) universities. However, it isn’t wholly accurate: I was a “minor” for the first year-and-a-half of my university experience (yes, I started at 16), and during that time received assistance from three distinct federal programs.

Very few families will have any ability to take advantage of vouchers. A family of 5 living on even $50,000 per year probably doesn’t have $3,000 to $5,000 per child (so $9,000 to $15,000) extra to be able to spend on the difference between vouchers and private school costs.

I think that this would result in a caste system, where only poor, disadvantaged children go to public school, middle class kids go to voucher private schools, and the elite go to non-voucher private schools.

Also, among the lower priced but good private schools, there’s already a wait. I checked into putting my children into St. John’s a couple years ago, and there was a waiting list about 2 years long.

So, I also think that if demand for private schools increase, low-quality private schools will pop up everywhere. That’s definitely not what we need.

Fix the public schools. Vouchers will only make them worse.

I assert that it would be very wrong for the government to inject itself in either case. We’ve seen that go wrong far to many times in our own history to trust that it wouldn’t go wrong again.

We believe it is a public good for people to have food to eat, so we help poor families buy food. We’ve chosen as a society to do that, and I generally agree with that policy. We choose to give out food stamps that can be used at private grocery stores. We don’t need to set up government grocery stores to meet this need. We trust the family to make the decision about where to spend the money. As we should.

We have decided that it is in the public interest for children to be educated. We agree to pay for that as a society. Is it really so wrong, as so many have asserted, to allow families to choose how this public money should be directed on behalf of their children?

I realize the food stamps and education vouchers are not directly parallel. Few things are. But I hope the similarities are sufficient to make my point about the benefits of vouchers and how it would be bad to apply ideological tests to vendors who do business with the government. (Pete already noted that some ideological tests are legal, such as rules barring discrimination based on race, for example. It appears those issues are addressed in this voucher legislation.)

It’s up to you if that is all right in terms of who teaches your children because you will not have anything other than the word of the school that their teachers are qualified.

To answer Brad, yes the government does tell you how you can spend housing or higher education or food “vouchers.” Please keep in mind that when the “government” gives food stamps, those only pay for government approved nutritional food. i.e. you can’t buy alcohol or tobacco with food stamps, but you can buy milk. Section 8 housing for which federal government “vouchers” are used have to meet very specific health and safety standards.

Similarly, federal Pell grants are only awarded to students who attend accredited institutions of higher education.

The proposed Utah voucher law does not require any kind of accreditation for K-12 schools that will be getting the vouchers. No standards for teachers, no accepted standards for financial accounting, health and safety, etc.

It’s apples and oranges. That could be part of the problem with this particular proposed law.

Would you have this same objection if we were talking about education tax credits instead of education vouchers? They reach the same end (money in a parent’s pocket instead of in the state treasury), but vouchers help poor families more than tax credits can. Do you oppose ANY state money going into a pocket where it could possibly be spent on something you disagree with?

Your objection to vouchers would be equally valid as an objection against the state for hiring a follower of Lafferty bin Koresh as a janitor. We’d be spending state funds on lunacy! In other words, your objection, while understandable, can’t be a factor in the decision in a free society.

I’d like to see a legislator actually answer it.