Debate Over School Vouchers

Kudos to Robert Wycoff and others at LEARN for finally admitting that they’ve peeked behind the “free choice” disguise worn by school voucher proponents and seen the ugly “anti-choice” beast hiding there.

The plain effect of an “open” voucher system would be to reduce educational subsidies for those who need it. Rich and middle-class families would, in effect, withdraw their tax-paid support for public education. This “windfall” income for the well-off would inevitably drive up the cost of private education, at the same time that it reduces funding for public schools. We must face the fact that public education is subsidized because it needs to be, and subsidies benefit poorer families more, because they need it.

This is typical Republican logic: Reduce education to a purely economic commodity, then remove economic assistance for the poor so they’ll have an “equal opportunity” to compete with the rich for it.

PATRICK JOHNSON

Santa Monica