Denying school vouchers maintains the need for social programs.

Firstly, vouchers or systems very similar to them have been tried before. Especially in England an have been rejected for various reasons. Your round one argument shows an amazing faith in the voucher systems ability to almost magically transform our society. Until I know exactly what kind of voucher system you proposing it will be hard for me to make a complete argument. But I will lay down some initial arguments. If you mean privatization of the entire school system, then you must realize that this will be a permanent decision that will result in an initial huge loss to the tax payers. Privatization schemes almost always result in government properties being sold at both a horrific loss and far beyond market value. Kansas City MO has for decades tried to bring light rail back, but have been stymied by the fact that they sold the right of ways to family for a pittance who has now been holding out for vast fortune to buy them back. Many school properties are in prime locations and when sold would be impossible to buy back. So a broad based privatization would be virtually irreversible. A comparison with the federal support of higher education would give some idea of what we could expect from the voucher system. University education was initially supported by heavily subsidized state universities and the Pell Grants. This was augmented by student loans. Since student loans where available to students of relatively high incomes it allowed parents to pay what they already could and then the student to contribute with enormous loans. The result was mind numbing inflation in the cost of higher education. Then states steadily reduced their subsides to state schools further feeding the inflationary forces. At the same time the majority of students who were not at poverty level have influenced states to move from need based assistance to merit based assistance which has further increased inflation and transfered monies from the poorest students to the richest students. The result has been that students in the united states leave university with huge debts which put them at almost an impossible disadvantage in the global employment market place. Further it is harder than ever for poor students to receive a college education and the prospect of huge debts is a huge disincentive to attend college especially for African Americans whose income potential is raised comparatively little by graduating from college. Once you separate the poor children from the middle class children into different schools as almost surely would happen with any voucher system there will be an incredible urge for the middle class voters to view the vouchers as a government handout which they don't need and will therefor vote against. Even if the vouchers are not eliminated one could be assured that they would never keep pace with inflation and eventually would shrink significantly in value. If an equal amount was given to every parent a rich parent who already has his or her children in private school would be able to add the entire amount of the voucher to the amount they are already paying. Which would of course result in substantial inflation. The poor parents would be able to add nothing to the voucher whose value would have already been diminished by the inflation caused by giving the vouchers to well off students. The inevitable result would be steep increase in the disparity of education received almost immediately this disparity would only increase as the voucher became viewed as welfare and was either cut or allowed to diminish through inflation. If the vouchers where mean tested it would only increase the perception that they were welfare and hasten their demise. The University system differs from the public school system in two important regards. Few private colleges are strictly religious and many students live in colleges far away. Americans are used to their school students living at home. However even a relatively large community often can only support one or two high schools. Many private high schools teach religious education and demand that their students participate in religious worship. How would you feel if your work moved you to a new community school and the only high school was Catholic and your child had to pray Hail Mary everyday? Or if the only school in driving distance was Muslim and your child was forced to were a veil and pray to Mecca five times a day? While these would be extreme, though very possible problems, the reality would be that religious schools in small communities would face huge competition from other the religious schools of other faiths which would doubtlessly result in an increase in sectarian strife. Further some students, those with significant learning disorders and those with severe disciplinary problems are likely to be either segregated in the few remaining public schools or segregated in private schools that will come to resemble hellish prisons. The main benefit that the severely disabled students receive from public school is contact with normal children. This benefit would almost surly disapear under a voucher system. You portray public school teachers as being trapped by unions that they don't desire. The reality is that there are plenty of private positions available. The majority of these potions pay less and few have similar benefits to public school. I know many teachers who are only are in public education to provide health insurance for their families because their husbands job don't provide health insurance. New jobs such as created by new private schools almost never come with family health benefits. These teachers will not be taking these jobs. Further teachers are the most pro-union segment of our economy. They make teamsters look like great big cuddly teddy bears. You can be assured that they will unionize a significant portion the private schools or at least force them into lengthy legal battles. Finally you hope that privatization will create an educational marketplace. However there is a significant body of evidence that this is not the case. Many private schools in the south have lower educational outcomes than their public school counterparts but parents pay to send their children to them because they are segregated. The selection of schools will be determined by many things. The quality of education is likely to be last amongst them. Firstly because privatized schools will be unlikely to submit to standardized testing which could erode their student base. Therefor it will be almost impossible for parents to determine which schools are better. Secondly parents are likely to be more affected by factors such as whether the school provides school buses, which sect the school promotes, whether the school keeps the children for the entire work day, and the racial composition of the school. Further in many communities there simply will not be any competition at all for high schools. Market forces can lead to dramatic improvement in systems that allow true unfettered market forces to work. But systems that are dependent on large government subsides are not a true markets and efforts at privatization tend to have disastrous consequences. You only have to look at (privatized but subsidized) Amtrak or the British rail system completely privatized to see what happens. Prices explode through the roof, and service plummets. But in transport there are other competing means of transport that are heavily regulated ans subsidized, namely the airlines. With primary schools, there is no other system to which children can turn if the school system collapses. The public school system is bad. But it could be much much worse and there is ample evidence that this outcome is quite probable if vouchers are added to the equation.