First Amendment no big deal, high school students say

[dcoles11]

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A private school has no gun held to its head to accept any student with a voucher, students with a record of bad behavior, a learning disability, or any other of a number of things could be and would easily be rejected.

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Perhaps. But the current system isn't working for those groups anyway. And there are private schools for people with learning disabilities. And I don't hear people advocating the total elimination of public schooling. Just parents having more freedom to determine where their kid has the option of going to school.

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In most areas the only available private schools are of a religious kind and not all parents want to send their kids to a religious school or the families religion may not be represented by any near by private school.

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Perhaps. But like you said, no one is forcing this kids anywhere. The issue is about choice. However, if the influx of demand is greater than available supply, the market will work to balance itself out. More private schools would be built, many with non-religious foundations.

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If your kid is left out of private school because of any of these reasons he or she will be left to a now even more underfunded public school system.

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I don't think there's going to be a mass exodus of kids from schools. But say there were. The reason would be because the public school wasn't keeping up with the private school. Should we force all the kids who have to go to bad schools to stay there just to make sure a small percentage is allowed to stay in a well-funded bad school?

I think you're making the mistake of assuming that well-funded = good. A gov't will waste money because it is a gov't and they can always raise the taxes. But a private school doesn't have such a luxury so they're naturally going to be less wasteful of the revenue they do receive.

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This is def. a tough issue, it may be one of those things we just have to try and see if it works, but I am shy to say that because I see problems, but problems exist now certainly as well. I think my main problem is the fact that school vouchers will not cover the total cost of a private school education, so kids in lower income families would I guess have to stay in the public school system which will be underfunded (due to vouchers which would come directly from the same budget) and wait until a private school is built that charges at or below the level of his/her voucher. I see two problems in that, one, what if it takes 1,2, maybe even 3 or 4 years for that school to be built that has a tuition cost that just the bare voucher can cover, isn't that leaving out a cycle of kids? I do realize that one can argue the current system is leaving out cycles of kids as well. My second problem is the quality of the proposed new schools that fix their tuition cost to bring in the lower income family kids that have just the voucher to put towards tuition. Lets say there is a county with 3 private schools and the voucher is good for $4,000. School 1 with a tuition cost of $10,000, school 2 with a tuition cost of $7,000 and school 3 with a tuition cost of $4,000, the school built for the sole purpose of providing a private school education for the kids who are in families that can't put a dime above the voucher towards their education. Is it a stretch that the education recieved at the $4,000 school would be inferiour to the $10,000 and $7,000 schools? Those schools would have better computers, would be able to attract the better teachers with higher pay, better gym, science lab, any type of equipment and supplies. Is it fare that now along with everything else in that childs life he or she has to settle for what he/she can afford, even when it comes to education?