I can say the same thing about public school system in Baltimore - which is a bad joke, except for t emagnet schools. My son went to a regular (or "zoned") high school for about two weeks - where a successful day was defined as the absence of a major injury or shooting. Then he transfered to a public magnet school - or a college prep school as it was called - which he attended for the rest of his high school 'career.' In sharp contrast to the "zoned" schools, the magnet school curriculum was very rigorous - to the point that he scored in the five top percentile on the SAT (I know, know, standardized testing sucks - the only point I'm trying to make is that public schools can do a very job in preparing kids for anything, even standardized tests).
As to the voucher thing - I do not think that religious right is the driving force behind it, although they would certainly benefit from it. I think it is major corporations - who want education publicly funded, but privately controlled. This is the whole idea behind 'privatisation.'
Two years ago I attended a European Foundation Centre conference in Brussels, and I accidentally found myself at a session devoted to private education. The panel was composed almost exclusively of the US corporate schmucks - someone from IBM, pharmaceutical industry, etc. (I wondered what that vermin had to to do with European education), extolling the virtues of school vouchers. The thing they liked particularly well was heavy emphasis of these voucher schools on courses designed to popularize corporate products and providing training corporate bosses wanted. In a word, they served as corporate propaganda centers.
Of course, private schools can be much more easily transformed into corporate propaganda outfits than public schools, hence the drive toward privatisation. There is only one drawback - money. Low income people - the main target of that propaganda effort - can seldom afford sending their kids to a private school. Vouchers effectively "solve" that problem. In a way, they are a way of corporate bosses saying to the public sector "pay up and fuck off of our schools."
wojtek