All proposed voucher plans include a proviso giving vouchers to many who already buy a private education. They show them how they can make more money for their families by not working than by working. Were every family to be given vouchers the system could continue on much as it does now. Parents would pick and choose among the government-approved schools, and the competition would likely make them slightly more responsive to parental wishes, but there is nothing that would keep politicians from applying the power of the purse strings to parents the way they do now with schools. Compulsory funding, compulsory attendance and compulsory curriculum can coexist easily with tax-funded vouchers.
Vouchers fail to pass the morality filter and the goal filter.
As far as separation of school and state goes, vouchers are not a good incremental step. These proposals suffer from the same problems as do vouchers, namely that they include the immoral components of tax-financing, coerced attendance and forced curriculum. Nor do they lead to Separation since they keep in place the most onerous components of our present school system, and may even reinforce them by sweeping up current private schools and homeschoolers under their umbrella. It is not enough to wait until we can free all the children and taxpayers from the clutch of the school system. Below are ideas that can be undertaken today on an individual basis as well as through group effort.