Michigan and California will have voucher referendums on the November ballot. Pennsylvania, Texas, Illinois and Indiana have indicated a willingness to pass similar legislation, and vouchers have been discussed in the legislatures of about half the states, Boston said. Voucher advocates say the public school system is doing a poor job of providing a good education for all students. They say schools in predominantly poor and minority areas tend to under-perform compared with schools in suburban and white areas. Public school advocates say vouchers would divert tax dollars needed to reform ill-performing schools to subsidize the private education of some students.
Vouchers do take money from public schools.
Vouchers don't bring more accountability to education, they bring less. The Mitchell majority essentially ruled that as long as parents have a say in how state aid is used in private schools, such public-private sharing provisions do not violate the Constitution. Kmiec said O'Connor was in favor of some sort of monitoring body at the state level to ensure that taxpayer money given to private schools is used for solely secular purposes. He said a number of state laws give governments such supervisory authority. Kmiec said the Mitchell decision settled a rift over the establishment clause caused by two opposing sets of high court decisions involving state aid to private schools.