Vouchers Within Reason: A Child-Centered Approach to Education Reform

Abstract

The ongoing debate over state funding of private education pits two adult-centered views against each other. Conservatives push vouchers but reject any regulation aimed at ensuring that state money is actually used to secure a good secular education for children. Liberals categorically oppose voucher programs, regardless of whether this might improve the secular education many children receive. This book argues for a middle ground: vouchers with strings. Rejecting parent-focused rights arguments, I argue that children, who do not make autonomous decisions to attend a private school rather than public, are entitled both to a share of state funding of education and to the benefits of state academic oversight.

Keywords: vouchers, religious schools, Establishment Clause, equal protection, school regulation, education funding, school accountability, indoctrination, sexism, fundamentalism, Catholicism