Reply #162: My thought is

[Yupster]

the parent with the voucher would have 20 different schools to choose between. Some would only have 20 kids in them. Some would be bigger, but the parent would have a choice, and if she made a bad choice, she could change to somewhere else.

When I used to teach, I sometimes had conferences with parents (often just a single mom or a grandma) of my worst kids. There were kids who had reputations that everyone hated them before they even arrived at the school, but when I had these conferences, I found something amazing.

The grandmother knew her kid was in trouble. She had been called to these conferences for years before I called her in ninth grade, but still, every time...

I was amazed at how much these people cared for their kid. The most unprepared parent or grandparent still loved and wanted the best for her kid, no matter how much trouble he had been in.

This taught me that the parents should have rights to make these kinds of decisions, because no one else cares for those kids as much as the parents do.

So, no, vouchers wouldn't get that kid in the most expensive school in town. In fact, they probably wouldn't even help me because my school would just raise its prices even more. But there would be places that the kid could go, and the parent would have choices better than a festering school that hasn't worked for 20 years.