Vouchers and Equal Opportunity

Since the 1960s, critics of public education in the United States have sought a variety of remedies to provide students, especially poor students, with greater access to quality K–12 education. One suggested avenue for reform is the deregulation of public education by dramatically altering the manner by which schools—public and private—are funded. The belief that markets are a better, fairer, and more democratic way to organize schooling has captured the attention of policymakers, parents, and the public. One prominent strategy for deregulation is the school voucher. Voucher plans are any system of certificate or cash payments by the government that enables public school students to attend schools of their choice, private or public. Vouchers, generally, have a fixed value and are redeemed at the time of enrollment.

Proponents of voucher plans base their arguments on their conviction that educational justice demands that families have an ethical and constitutional right to choose the schools their children attend and that deregulation will lead to greater student achievement. Voucher advocates claim that deregulation will lead to greater equal opportunity for students because choice will free families from the politically controlled public system, which requires that students attend schools assigned to them by government officials.

Opponents of voucher plans argue that vouchers are unconstitutional because they lower the barrier between church and state and that the evidence voucher advocates enlist to show that private school voucher students outperform public school students is exaggerated, if not false. Opponents argue that voucher plans will not lead to greater equal opportunity; on the contrary, voucher plans will restratify and resegregate the school system.

Voucher plans have been adopted in the United States as well as in a number of other countries including Bangladesh, Belize, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Guatemala, Lesotho, Poland, Sweden, and the United Kingdom. Not all voucher plans are identical, and certainly the support of vouchers varies by country and political climate. Voucher plans tend to be promoted by policy and political leaders who are convinced that market mechanisms are more likely to create greater educational equality and innovation than government mandated reforms. Voucher plans are controversial because they touch a raw social nerve—who is responsible for schooling and what is the proper role of government in citizens' decision making about their children's education?

This entry examines the arguments for and against voucher plans as they influence equal educational opportunities in the United States, and then examines the empirical evidence concerning the measured academic outcomes associated with voucher plans in several American experiments. While the focus is on the United States, data from other countries will be used in examining the student achievement outcomes of voucher experiments.