Mary, Where Are U

The debate over whether or not the United States government should

grant tuition vouchers to the parents of children who attend private schools has

gone on for many years, and has included many powerful arguments on both

sides of the issue. Those who support the private school vouchers believe that

they are beneficial to everyone because they promote productivity in both public

and private schools alike, and they also give low-income families the chance to

give their children a quality private school education. Those in opposition to the

vouchers say that they will drain money out of the public schools, and that they

only truly help a small population, mainly the wealthy and advantaged.

Opposers also believe that the vouchers interfere with the Separation of Church

and State, since many private schools have a religious affiliation. This issue has

truly been a controversial one, with many people fighting arduously. After

reading through the various arguments for each side, one can not help but come

to their own conclusion about private school vouchers.

There have been many school voucher programs proposed in the past,

but they all seem to share one common theme. This similarity between them is

that they all promote giving households that send their children to private schools

a tax dollar-funded voucher that would cover all or most of the cost of the

school's tuition. Many of the proposals also include the right for parents to chose

which private school their child will attend. The vouchers allows students to use

the money that would be subsidized for them in a public school to go toward a

private school education. This system redirects the flow of educational funding,

bringing it to the individual family instead of the school district.

The idea of school vouchers first became popular after Milton Friedman,

an economist, released two publications, in 1956 and in 1962, that supported the

voucher plan. In his 1962 book, Capitalism and Freedom, when Friedman

discusses education, he turns to public education criticizes it for being

"unresponsive" because it has been free from competition (Lieberman,