Kansas Looking At School Vouchers?

In a semi-breaking news event, Kansas City, Kan., Public Schools lobbyist Bill Reardon said members of the education committee in the Kansas Legislature could be investigating vouchers this fall.

Along with vouchers, the committee will investigate early childhood learning, the teacher shortage, professional development and the alternate pay schedule. While a long ways away, there is a good chance individual members of the Kansas Legislature will consider passing a voucher package.

My opinion on vouchers: I am against them. I feel vouchers would place a greater dependence and responsibility on government and would give more authority for government to regulate private schools by giving out "handouts" to students.

Vouchers, for the most part, are essentially a social conservative version of government handouts, or welfare. In most other cases not involving the school system, true fiscal conservatives and libertarians would be against vouchers and other handouts.

Private and government are two words that do not belong together. Vouchers would both undermine the public and private school systems throughout Kansas. Private schools should remain private and a voucher system would shrink the independence a private school has.

Oh, and there is that thing concerning separation of church in state. Vouchers are government funding (unlike tax credits), which brings into play a number of laws concerning religion and the government.

As a libertarian, I believe in both the separation of church and state, along with the separation of public and private sectors and education. These two reasons lead to my opposition of massive voucher programs.