Comment & Debate
Tammy Johnson, director of race and public policy programs for the Applied Research Center, a think tank focusing on racial justice that is based in Oakland, Calif. – “In terms of a voucher program, you may have created broad access for a very small pool of students of color, but overwhelmingly the majority of them still don’t have access to quality teachers, rigorous curriculum and all the things conductive to a quality education. The reality is that the voucher program will never serve the majority of the population, especially people of color. It isn’t set up to do that.”
“The Case Against Vouchers”. National Education Association – Vouchers were not designed to help low-income children. Milton Friedman, the “grandfather” of vouchers, dismissed the notion that vouchers could help low-income families, saying “it is essential that no conditions be attached to the acceptance of vouchers that interfere with the freedom of private enterprises to experiment.”
[…] Despite desperate efforts to make the voucher debate about “school choice” and improving opportunities for low-income students, vouchers remain an elitist strategy. From Milton Friedman’s first proposals, through the tuition tax credit proposals of Ronald Reagan, through the voucher proposals on ballots in California, Colorado, and elsewhere, privatization strategies are about subsidizing tuition for students in private schools, not expanding opportunities for low-income children.