Vouchers Subsidize Parents, Not Schools
BevK August 30th, 2007
Paul T. Mero has a valid point to make about why education vouchers for everyone is the only fair way to provide for education without giving preferential treatment to some.
My neighbor hates school vouchers because he does not believe that taxpayers should subsidize families choosing to send their children to private schools. He often says, “Utah families already have school choice. They can send their kids to public, private, or homeschools. Why should I pay for the personal choices of families to send their children to private schools?”
To which I respond that my wife and I pay large amounts of state income taxes each year to subsidize the education of neighbor children even though we homeschool our own.
“Yes, but that’s your choice,” he replies. Well, no, that’s not my choice alone. By law my taxes go to support public education, not homeschools. When you think about it, neighbor, my wife and I are actually the better education citizens–we don’t burden taxpayers with our children’s education, and we willingly pay for the public education of children in other families.
“Fine. But I don’t think that we should subsidize private school education,” he retorts. But it’s OK to subsidize public school education? “That’s different!” How? “We have an obligation to give every child a good education. And, besides, paying for public education is not a subsidy.”
That is what homeschoolers and private schoolers do. They pay for their own children’s education and pay for their neighbors children to go to public school. Vouchers would be in a set amount. So, even if a parent chose a $20,000 a year school to send his children to, that school wouldn’t be get $20,000 in a voucher. The parent would have to supplement the voucher amount.
I don’t see the problem in that.
