Originally Posted by SouthernDemocrat

On one hand, I would love to have a voucher system. That way we could move into the city limits, and use the vouchers to send our kids to private school. As it is, its much cheaper to live right outside the city limits in a close in suburb, and send our kids to the great public schools there.

That said, while it would be nice for us, it would do nothing to fix the problems with many urban school districts, or the issues with the inner city. You can't hand someone a voucher and expect that to take the place of all the life choices that others have to make to better themselves. The reason why the public school systems in many inner cities are failing is that many if not in some cases most, of the parents of the kids in them do not take an active role in their kids education. No schools can fix 15 year olds having kids and their grandparents being stuck raising them. A voucher program is not going to fix absentee fathers and worthless parents. We have tried vouchers in the public housing program, they don't work. All they do is take households that have made a litany of poor life choices, and move them in to neighborhoods where people made better choices. It doesn't accomplish anything, it just spreads the problem around.

The fact is, the problem is not public schools. The public schools our kids are in outperforms the vast majority of private schools. The problem is the parents, and giving them a voucher is not going to fix that.