Bluntly, because I won't get any!  At first, when I was uneducated about the program, I was very proud and excited.  Finally, my tax dollars could be to an extent spent by ME, to educate my children as I saw fit, rather than throw the money away at an abyssimal school system.  But like I said, those were the premature emotional ejaculations of an uneducated man.  Now I am more enlightened, having learned more about the programs that were the ones being challenged, and ultimately upheld.

I won't be eligible, as I am "well off".  Now, that's well off to Uncle Sugar, mind you, not "really" well off.  But since I make a modest yet respectable salary(enough for my wife to stay home and home school, and me to have a reasonable modicum of toys and a nice house), I won't be eligible for vouchers.  You see, they're for the poor.  So it is not that I will FINALLY have some choice how I SPEND MY DAMNED TAX DOLLARS, but it is that somebody else, whom I and the rest of you have been dutifully supporting for years now, THEY get to choose how MY *UCKING TAX MONEY is spent.  Frankly, this angers, yet does not surprise me.  Uncle Sugar feels that the money I get from my employer is not truly mine, and was not really earned.  Thusly, since I get "too much" of it, I will be relieved of the burden of it so that those *UCK NUTS who WON'T get off their asses can have some.  And now, they will get to go to the schools that I would be sending my children to if we were not home schooling.  

And yet again, I pay for it.  Just damn.

(Edited to add one more: JUST DAMN!!!)

Here Here. It's all a dirty government plot to take money from hard workers, and give it to the lazy and or stupid. We should have manditory stupidty/lazyness testing in public high schools. If we find a kid whos been dabbling in these things, we should ship said kid to africa. Good bye. I hate the lazy.

Tin foil man: if your post is as steeped in sarcasm as it seems, then poo-poo on you!  If you're serious, then HERE HERE!!![:D]

Voucher programs give vouchers to whomever the programs specify.

So far, the pilot programs have been used in exactly three poor black urban school districts.  They were designed for poor black urban school districts, and they targeted their vouchers for poor black urban schoolkids.  One is in Milwaukee, one is in Cleveland, and I forget where the third one is.

I don't think the third one is in Alabama, so you wouldn't have gotten any money right now anyway.

But, if you can get your state to pass a voucher program that gives vouchers to everyone, then you will be able to get vouchers for your kids too.

The key problem is getting past all of the NEA union scum who (quite successfully) try to sabotage every mention of voucher programs no matter where or when or how they are proposed.  Usually they terrify the vast soccer-mom middle/upper-middle class, whose schools (by definition) are "above average", into thinking that their schools will be destroyed if a voucher system is created.  Then the soccer moms, along with their pussy-whipped husbands and all the union scum, vote down the voucher program (or get elected officials to vote it down, or gut it, or otherwise sabotage it).

So, get out and get active.  Get something on the ballot (if you're in a state with Initiatives/Referendums) or get a legislator to write up a bill.  Then make sure your neighbors get INFORMED about how well the program will work, and how it will give them choices to get their kids out of the crappy local schools.

Eventually, you might get the law passed, and then you can be happy.

Good luck.  At the very least, you'll get to have a lot of fun battling the teachers' unions and their fellow union scum.  You might even make a good chunk of cash on the backside by suing the shit out of them for all the violations of campaign finance and reporting laws that they'll pull to try to destroy your proposals.

All good ideas.  I am beginning to give SERIOUS thought to entering the Libertarian political arena out here, so this could be fun.  Of course, as a Libertarian, I don't believe that this should be on the table, but the converse is that my tax dollars shouldn't be EITHER, so to challenge and agitate this could be FUN!!!

Well, it's sorta like Harry Browne back in 1996 -- "oh, we can't take matching funds, that would be immoral!"

Sure, it is, but (a) the taxes have been stolen from me and other Libertarians already and they aren't coming back, so he might as well have gotten SOME use out of them;  (b) since he didn't take them, they were available for use to jack up more social(ist) programs elsewhere.

More specifically, in the vouchers case (c) it's a step in a slightly better direction, anyway;  (d) if it goes to its logical conclusion, the pooblick skewls will all shut down and die off, at which point you'll save a whole lot of tax dollars since private schools give better educations to students for far less money than the pooblick skewls do.

Good points Achmed. I think the flood gate has been opened but it will take the passing of state laws to take advantage of the new ruling. I'm sick of paying both taxes and private school tuition so that my kids go to school in a decent environment. I'm not wealthy either and it's a drain. You guys have any idea how much Q3131A you could buy with a years tuition for two kids? [:D]

Shut the hell up and pay your "fair share"....... It's the communist way. "From each according to his worth, to each according to his need". The Berlin wall fell over 10 years ago, haven't you figured out who won???

Private schools and vouchers are a cop out. It's all more of the same old "seperate but equal" BS from years gone by. The real fix is to figure out how to fix the public schools.

So go ahead and get your vouchers and send your kids to private schools. That just allows the problem to get worse. What a mistake.

Vouchers are a solution to a problem that shouldn't exist, but I'll support them because it's a big kick-in-the-pants to public schools. Maybe everyone will be able to see public schools as the failure they are if stuff like this keeps up. This country won't turn around until things like the public schools are done away with completely.

AHH yes, fix the govt. schools. They are already doing such a wonderful job useing 2-3 times more $$/student than a private school. They don't even know the difference between a democracy and a republic. Do you want the govt./NEA indoctrinating your kids with THEIR agenda? Or would you like to choose where and from whom they receive their indoctrination???

Here is an idea for vouchers: if you send your kids to private school you don't pay ANY property tax on your primary residence. Property tax is a major source of funds for public schools so if you are not using public schools yet you are paying tuition you get to keep your own money. This way no one would "get" any money from the gov, you would just be keeping your own money.

Now is the time to start pushing for a complete school voucher program.  The NEA has long been guilty of power mongering to the detriment of the children.  While not everyone needs to go to college, I would bet not 10% of the kids graduating are ready for college level work.  With the school systems exagerating the percentage of kids graduating high school, and ducking responsability for educating they need to be held very accountable.  The best way to do this is the school voucher.  

The schools don't need more money, they need school systems that will allow the teachers to teach.  On the other side of the coin is the teachers deserve kids who are there to learn and not be babysat.
The kids who are not there to learn need to be kicked out until they are ready to learn.

Get the federal government out of the schools, and get the NEA out of the schools and keep local control.  The federal government is great at blackmailing the local governemts into accepting money, but they are also the cheif cause of the screwed up programs that are so ineffective that they are laughable if it wasn't so serious.  Case in point school lunch programs and breakfast programs.  Look at the menus, one school district feeds kids doughnuts for breakfast... now that nutrition from the federal level.  The feds have also set standards for lunches, nachos is not a lunch.  But it qualifies under the federal program.

Hey dog, you know what?  I care more about MY KIDS than I do about some vague idea of improving the public school system.  I don't know if you have any kids, but I hope that if you ever do you will realize that your FIRST DUTY IS TO THOSE KIDS, not to society, not to "the system" but to those kids.  If you fail that duty, it won't mean one flying fart how well you met any others.

The solution, to paraphrase Sir Rudy, is to BLOW UP THE NEA! Unfortunately, this will not happen, and may earn me a visit from Ashcroft, courtesy of the Patriot Act.

Vouchers are the closest thing we can do. If we can't kill the evil, at least we can make it run screaming in fear.

Couldn't agree more, I've said this for years to anyone who'd listen.  If I send my kids to a private school, or home school for that matter, WHY should I be paying taxes to support school systems of which I do not avail myself.  WHY???

OK, I'll shut up and pay my fair share now.

Your point is way way off. First of all, "seperate but equal" does NOT apply because race isn't a criteria in either using a voucher or going to another school. Or at least I've not yet read of it being so.

As for "fixing the schools", that'll never happen as long as the teachers unions & liberals both want to throw more & more money down the cesspool for fewer & fewer results.

Kids come to school tired from being up half the night working, babysitting or partying. A lot have eating habits that would borderline stupidity.

Let's allow some competition for schools in order to see if it indeed works. If not, then move to another solution.