Posted by
John R. LaPlante on Friday, September 01, 2006 11:57:16 AM
"Maine is the last place most would look for evidence on vouchers," says the Maine Public Policy Institute. "School choice is, after all, a solution proposed for the inner cities and for failing schools, challenges Maine rarely faces."
And yet, Maine does have publicly provided vouchers. It includes 18 percent of all students in the state, and the experience with vouchers goes back to 1873. Far from being limited to a single city in the state (as is the case in Wisconsin, or was the case until recently in Ohio), three of every ten towns in Maine participate, as do three out of every four high schools.
There’s one thing that’s different about the Maine voucher program. It isn’t called a voucher program; what Maine uses is “tuitioning.” Towns collect tax money to pay for education. They may establish school systems. Then again, they may not, and opt instead to let families of students decide where to spend the money. Originally, the vouchers could be taken to religious or government-run schools. Because of a state supreme court ruling, religiously oriented schools are barred from receiving taxpayer funds—but nonsectarian private schools are not.
The advocates of vouchers (and tax credits and charter schools) base their work on the claim that competition among providers works to promote innovation, lower costs, and superior performance—in education as well as in business as we know it.
A study of school performance in Maine lends credence to these claims. Click through to the report for the rest of the story.