Please vote 5 on this topic if you agree that Universal School Choice should be a plank in our platform.
A universal school choice system is one that enables all parents to send their children to a school of their choice, public or private.
Personally, I favor universal education tax credits, but I think our platform should support universal vouchers as a viable alternative. Universal education tax credits are non-refundable tax credits (meaning you can use them to reduce your tax liability, but you can't wind up receiving a subsidy). Taxpayers receive credits for their own children's educational expenses (paying for the public or private school of their choice, paying for additional educational materials, paying for tutoring services, etc.). Additionally, taxpayers can receive credits for any money they donate to a Scholarship Granting Organization (a public or private organization that grants scholarships to students). Scholarships from an SGO can be used to pay for any qualified educational expense, at the discretion of the SGO.
UETCs have a number of advantages over vouchers:
- They do not compel taxpayers to pay for schools that they do not support, which in turn means they do not create incentives for special interests to lobby for increasing control over schools. With vouchers, you will tend to start with regulations of voucher-supported schools, and these regulations will increase over time hampering much of the innovation that voucher-supported schools might bring.
- They would allow parents to send their children to parochial/religious schools without using public funds. I personally don't want to pay for someone else's child to attend a religious school, and the courts would forbid it anyway. Since users of UETCs are using their own funds, this is not an issue.
- They would support a broader range of educational choices. With UETCs, parents would be able to pay for formal schooling, tutoring services, books and other educational materials, home schooling, museum trips, etc. at their own discretion.
The facts indicate that, when given the power, parents are much better at making educational choices for children than politicians and bureaucrats. For more on this important issue, I would suggest reading School Choice: The Findings (reviewed here: http://books.monstersandcritics.com/features/article_1354576.html/Featured_Book_Review_School_Choice_The_Findings)
