No Accounting for School Vouchers

Abstract

The standard conservative view of privatization in education favors state funding of private schools, religious and nonreligious, without state oversight to ensure accountability for how the money is used. The standard liberal view opposes state funding of private schools regardless of whether there is state oversight to ensure that the funding improves children's secular education. This Article highlights the main points against both standard views, and it advances the intermediate position that states may provide funding for private schooling but only if they also regulate and oversee the private schools sufficiently to ensure state money actually improves the secular education those schools provide. The Article further critiques prevailing assumptions about what accountability entails, and it assesses to what extent there is real educational accountability in voucher programs today.

Keywords: school choice, vouchers, religious schools, educational accountability