Are vouchers a good choice

Gov. Bobby Jindal wants vouchers to private schools to play a bigger role in providing education to our school age kids. And if properly administered, there is no reason why they would not benefit the system.

To begin with, they should not increase the cost of public education since the value of a voucher would not be more than the cost of educating a student by a public school. The fact that there is value in volume does not necessarily apply in public education. It seems that the more students that are so educated, the more cost there is to educate one student.

But regardless, every school age person has the right to attend a public school. The private schools providing education without vouchers, therefore, are merely presenting a gift to the public system by taking over some of its expenses.

Another benefit to vouchers would be to provide some competition to the public system. If private schools can provide better education to those with vouchers than public school students, the wave of the future would be toward private schools.

And what’s wrong with that? If they can do a better job, we will end up with a better workforce and, possibly, people who invoke better morals and values than can be provided constitutionally by a public system.

There could be some downfalls in a voucher system. There could be many schools waiting in line to sell their education that doesn’t measure up to what is needed in this country.

So a lot of overseeing is needed to prevent them from taking financial advantage of the system and not providing the education. So checks and balances have to be in place to make it work.

There have been some problems with voucher systems used so far in the country. It is perhaps due to the fact that a whole new system has been started without sufficient effort to merge it with a totally public education system.

It’s worth a try to mesh it in and try to reap the advantages that private education can offer. We wish the governor well if he can get the legislature to agree.