<p>Here are my thoughts on vouchers. I believe that blindly handing out public vouchers that can be used for students attending private schools is both wrong and dangerous for public education.</p>
<p>If public vouchers are to be used the playing field must first be leveled. So I would propose the following conditions. Private schools could accept voucher students only if they were willing to unconditionally accept all students wishing to attend. If there were more students wishing to attend than the school could accomodate, the decision of who would attend would be done by lottery, open to the public and overseen by both the private school and representatives of the public school board. Students paying their full tuition would not be subject to the lottery nor would they be eligible to participate in the lottery. Also, private schools would have to accept and then provide comparabe services to students with physical, emotional and developmental handicaps. Students could be expelled for misbehavior but the pro rata share of the voucher payment would be returned to the public school. And finally, private schools would have to provide its students with the same performance testing as the local school district and publically publish their results.</p>
<p>I am satisfied that with these provisions in place, the public and private schools would be faced with a relatively level playing field. Privates would not be able to skim off the best students and would have to provide a comparable level of support for special needs students.</p>
<p>An interesting note, I read today that an extensive study found that charter schools typically underperformed the public schools. I need to reread the article to see if the comparison was between charter/public schools in the same community.</p>