> It's been said the private schools which take vouchers would not be accountable for how they spend the money. Not true. They would have the best accountability possible-the parents. Rather than saying that the government decides which schools are bad, and which schools are worthy of being funded, parents could have the choice of where to put their children, and how their tax dollars are spent.

Here's something I don't get: aren't (public) schools already accountable to parents? I mean, they're accountable to local school boards, the state and (to a lesser, but probably too large of a degree) the federal government. The government in this country is made up of private citizens (except at the highest levels where it is made up of corporations pretending to be politicians), and almost all of these people are elected officials.

The government in the US is largely set up as a republic for a reason; representation through officials is often better than direct democracy. This is because elected officials (like school board members) have the time and inclination to spend a good portion of their time directly involved in the matters over which they preside. It's your job as a voter and a citizen to pick the individual that you feel will do the best job (a reason why voting along party lines is harmful).

It's not as appealing to say "I'm going to pick someone to make important decisions for me" as it is to say "I'm going to make every decision for myself." But at some level you have to relinquish that amount of power and control and give it to other people. If that thought is terrifying to you, guess what? YOU CAN RUN FOR OFFICE! Representative democracy is really a pretty clever scheme. Our founding fathers were really an incredibly intelligent group of people.

Furthermore, individuals have a ton of other options to directly bring about change. I wonder how many voucher proponents regularly attend school board meetings. You can also straight out contact your elected officials personally. I almost guarantee you can get an audience with any school board member in your district if you're willing to try at it (the same probably goes for city council members, state assemblymen and congressmen).

At any rate, this isn't meant to be a wholesale dismissal to school vouchers, but just to the notion that parents currently have no say in what goes on in schools.

Stephen