Proponents of school vouchers saw these govern-
ment-funded tuition grants as a means of providing
choice and competition in education. They believed
that the public school system was a socialized mo-
nopoly, that its problems resulted from this fact, and
that competition with private schools could cure
those problems. Opponents warned that diverting
tax dollars away from public schools and into the
hands of private providers was no way to correct the
problems facing the American public school system.
The debate was shaped by the fact that it was clearly
not possible to fix the U.S. education system quickly,
so even parents who believed in improving public
schools for future generations might not want to
send their children to those schools if they had not
yet improved.
Not a New Debate Although the term “voucher”
may have been a new addition to the debate, the
core idea was not new. In the founding days of the
nation, English economist Adam Smith, in his semi-
nal workAn Inquir y into the Nature and Causes of the
Wealth of Nations(1776; commonly known asThe
Wealth of Nations), had called for the government to
give money directly to parents. This money would be
used to purchase educational services in order to
prevent the development of a monopoly over the
provision of such services. In 1956, Nobel Prize-
winning economist Milton Friedman argued that
the existence of the monopoly Adam Smith had pre-
dicted two centuries earlier was leading to inefficien-
cies and a lack of innovation. He believed the quality
of education would improve if education was driven
by market forces. It was no coincidence that the
voucher idea resurfaced in the late 1950’s and early
1960’s. During the height of the Civil Rights move-
ment, public schools were seen as avenues of oppor-
tunity and mobility and had become the major focal
point of demands for change, community control,
and racial equality. Thus, calls for privatization in ed-
ucation reemerged, both among those who wished
to avoid the social and political unrest they per-
ceived to exist in public schools, and among those
seeking greating educational opportunities than they
believed were available in those schools.
A Flurry of Activity In 1983, the U.S. Department
of Education releasedA Nation at Risk, which warned
of the impending economic doom its authors fore-
casted for the country as a direct result of a steady
erosion of student achievement in American public
schools. The report produced a sense of urgency in
education not experienced since the launch of the
Soviet satellite Sputnik 1 in 1957. Thousands of ini-
tiatives were launched, as educators and elected offi-
cials responded to the perceived crisis. Among the
resulting reforms were increases in teacher pay cou-
pled with decreases in class size, tougher standards
for teacher preparation programs and certification,
revamped curricula, district consolidations aimed at
efficiencies of scale in management, schools-within-
schools programs that reduced the size of student
bodies while allowing for larger building sizes, and
the revamping of school calendars, including the
introduction of year-round education. Missing from
all of this activity, however, were the vouchers advo-
cated by Friedman and others. Efforts to bring
vouchers into the picture were blocked by school ad-
ministrators, teacher unions, and liberal reformers
unwilling to abandon the public school system to
market forces.
The fundamental issue at debate was whether or
not public tax dollars should be used to pay for a pri-
vate education. Conservatives, who were committed
to a free market approach to education, supported
vouchers as a tool of school choice. Under his eco-
nomic plan, dubbed “Reaganomics,” President Ron-
ald Reagan spoke consistently in favor of school
vouchers, private tuition tax breaks, and other pub-
lic subsidies for private tuition. Religious conser-
vatives and Catholic advocates rallied behind the
voucher idea, but the concept was tarnished when
pro-segregationists began to support vouchers as
a means of avoiding integrated schools. Federal
courts ruled against vouchers in several cases, giving
the impression that voucher supporters had a racist
agenda. In addition, because vouchers might be
used to pay for parochial, as well as secular, private
schools, some opponents believed that they would
violate the separation of church and state.Shift in the Late 1980’s Calls for privatization
reemerged as more demands were placed on public
education to address social inequalities related to
race and class. Many social programs resulting from
the Civil Rights movement and put in place during
the late 1960’s and the 1970’s had focused on public
schools. Federal, state, and local funds were directed
at reducing the degree of inequality, and public
schools became the focus of these efforts. During
the Reagan era, most of these programs were ended.850 School vouchers debate The Eighties in America