This story summarizes proposals by governors in Florida, Indiana, Nevada, and Wisconsin to establish or expand K-12 school voucher programs. With the exception of Nevada, all the states have Republican-controlled state legislatures, which means that the obvious barrier to passage (a legislature controlled by Democrats who rely heavily on teachers’ unions for support) is absent.
There are all sorts of policy arguments on both sides of the issue. It is unclear, for example, whether vouchers actually lead to improved student performance. Consider, for example, this study, which reports that participants in the Washington, D.C. voucher program (which unsurprisingly wasn’t renewed by the Obama Administration) were more likely to graduate from high school, but didn’t perform significantly better on standardized tests.
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