As a matter of public policy, don vouchers help schoolchildren, rather than hurt them?
In the short run, vouchers may help the tiny percentage of students that receive them – although parents will not know whether the private or parochial school is providing a better education because, under the “A+ education plan,” private and parochial schools are exempt from the grading system used to measure public school performance. In the long run, however, the 90% of children who remain in their neighborhood public school will be harmed because they will be attending more impoverished schools. Voucher proponents claim that they are helping the poorest kids from the most troubled school districts. Although vouchers allow some children to leave failing schools for supposedly better schools, vouchers have many drawbacks. First, tax dollars are diverted from public secular institutions to private religious institutions. Vouchers fuel the abandonment of the public schools and provide financial assistance to often wealthy parents who already send their children to private schools. Seco
