Hàng tỷ đô la được chi tiêu mỗi năm về phúc lợi, nhưng tại một thời điểm khi các tiêu chuẩn trung bình của cuộc sống của công dân Mỹ là cao hơn nó đã từng được trong lịch sử, các cuộn phúc lợi đang phát triển. Ngân sách an sinh xã hội khổng lồ, | What s Wrong with Our Schools 161 is passed on to all taxpayers in which case it would amount to at most a few cents off your tax bill. You have to pay private tuition in addition to taxes a strong incentive to keep your child in a public school. Suppose however the government said to you If you relieve us of the expense of schooling your child you will be given a voucher a piece of paper redeemable for adesignatedsumof money if and only if it is used to pay the cost of schooling your child at an approved school. The sum of money might be 2 000 or it might be a lesser sum say 1 500 or 1 000 in order to divide the saving between you and the other taxpayers. But whether the full amount or the lesser amount it would remove at least a part of the financial penalty that now limits the freedom of parents to choose. 4 The voucher plan embodies exactly the same principle as the GI bills that provide for educational benefits to military veterans. The veteran gets a voucher good only for educational expense and he is completely free to choose the school at which he uses it provided that it satisfies certain standards. Parents could and should be permitted to use the vouchers not only at private schools but also at other public schools and not only at schools in their own district city or state but at any school that is willing to accept their child. That would both give every parent a greater opportunity to chooseandatthesemie time require public schools to finance themselves by charging tuition wholly if the voucher corresponded to the full cost at least partly if it did not . The public schools would then have to compete both with one another and with private schools. This plan would relieve no one of the burden of taxation to pay for schooling. It would simply give parents a wider choice as to the form in which their children get the schooling that the community has obligated itself to provide. The plan would also not affect the present standards imposed on private .
