Making choices about school choice: A study of the legal and ideological issues of education vouchers in the United States.

Abstract

Within the public school arena, school choice deals primarily with the opportunity of parents to choose a public school for their children within their school district, adjacent school district, or possibly state-wide. Magnet schools and charter schools would be included within the public school choice experiment. The more explosive idea within the school choice umbrella, however, is the proposal that choice should be extended to private schools, including sectarian schools. Presently, two proposals would extend freedom of choice to private schools, one relying upon tax credits and the other upon vouchers. Of the two, vouchers is the more hotly contested. Today, school choice has become a political issue in the educational arena. The school choice debate is now particularly charged as vocal proponents and opponents argue their respective positions on matters of social, educational, philosophical, and legal import. The debate is necessary to investigate because of its importance. This dissertation represents the efforts of the author to study the legal and ideological issues of education vouchers in the United States: Chapter One is an historical overview that traces the two hundred year debate that ultimately designed today's school system; Chapter Two addresses the salient legal issues that confront any effort to expand parental school choice, particularly sectarian school choice, through the use of government financial assistance; Chapter Three reviews the major proponents and opponents of school choice and their respective positions; Chapter Four details specific voucher proposals currently in place, and contested, in Milwaukee, Cleveland, and Chittenden, Vermont. Also, because of their rapidly increasing popularity, private voucher schemes and the charter school initiative are reviewed; Chapter Five analyzes the conflicts among social science researchers conducting research on voucher proposals specifically, and school choice initiatives generally; and Chapter Six discusses the unacknowledged subtext of the school choice debate and its capacity to subvert the process of school choice reform. On balance school choice reform is less likely to significantly alter our system of schooling in the near term, than it is to sow the seeds for effective change over time.