Should parents be allowed to choose the schools their children attend? Should they be forced to pay a financial penalty if they choose a private school?
Opinion polls indicate that significant majorities of the American public support allowing parents to choose the schools their children attend without financial penalty. Milwaukee and Cleveland are home to pilot programs that allow low-income parents to enroll their children in private schools at taxpayers’ expense. Florida has recently enacted a program that provides taxpayer-funded tuition scholarships to children attending the state’s worst public schools.
School vouchers—tax-funded certificates or scholarships good for tuition at participating schools—are the only device available that extends to parents who choose private schools the same entitlement to public funds as is enjoyed by parents who choose public schools for their children. With a major U.S. Supreme Court decision on school vouchers expected in the summer of 2002, now is a good time to ask what an ideal voucher program would look like.
The wide range of design options that go under the umbrella of “school vouchers” is often overlooked by choice critics who seem to imagine a single national voucher plan is being proposed. Even if such a thing were desirable, a national school voucher plan is impossible given the country’s decentralized jurisdiction over education. The U.S. system of federalism—whereby powers are delegated and limited—means voucher plans will be designed and implemented differently in each state, and possibly even in each city and community in the same state.
There are, in fact, as many different ideas as to the form a voucher plan should take as there are communities seeking to improve their schools. In 1971 and 1978, John Coons and Stephen Sugarman published the first detailed voucher proposals. In 1991, The Heartland Institute published a comprehensive planning manual for vouchers titled Rebuilding America’s Schools. It includes a collection of 14 proposed school voucher bills, along with brief commentaries on their key features.
This policy report describes a model voucher bill, The Heartland Plan for Illinois, drafted by the author with assistance from several others, notably George Clowes and the Illinois Legislative Reference Bureau, in 1996-97.
The following discussion opens with a summary of proposed legislation. A review of key elements of the bill is next, followed by a summary of the benefits of the legislation. Questions and answers about the bill appear at the end.
