. . . That said, the danger of vouchers is that they will be underfunded and leave disabled or unruly students completely shit-out-of-luck. The Florida regulations cited in the article seem designed to avoid those problems, but it is a serious danger. . . .
Worse than being underfunded is if, in addition, schools were permitted to offer plans with supplementary cash tuition fees. Then you have a straightforward regressive tax break, much like the property tax deduction.
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. . .
On the other hand, as the article emphasizes, as long as only non-profits
are involved, it is actually unclear what difference there would be in
practice between a "public school choice" system and a heavily regulated
"private school choice", . . .
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There could be a huge difference between public schools, charter schools, and voucher schools. "Heavily regulated" in this context could be an oxymoron. Regulation that is costly is not the same as regulastion that changes outcomes. Insofar as regulation is for show, you could have additional costs but little change in results. The choice of contracting (and by implication, vouchers to a greater extent) reflects a desire on the part of public officials to regulate less, not more. I talk about this at length in my book, for those interested..
mbs