Clint Bolick and others debated inner city school voucher programs at the law school today, and our law-and-econ lunch bunch decided to go there and eat the free pizza. Bolick was very good. Listening to his opponents disparage the motives of school choice advocates, though, I wished the discussion had focussed on the basic question:

Why should a parent not be able to transfer his child and the government spending on education from an expensive school that teaches badly to a cheaper school that teaches well?

Professor Tanford did have an answer: because the cheap, good school might teach the child some religion, and this violates the Constitution's prohibition by establishing a national religion. Mr. Bolick had one good answer: we already allow government funding of scholarships to religious colleges, so, if, dubiously, such a practice amounts to establishing a national religion, we've already done it. The reply to that, of course, is that we should take away any government aid to private universities such as Notre Dame that have religious affiliations. More fundamentally, of course, allowing vouchers to be used at a Catholic school in no way makes Catholicism the state religion.

One speaker noted that Milton Friedman liked to say "government school" instead of "public school". "Government school" is indeed clearer and more accurate, but it has three syllables instead of two. Perhaps it would be better to contrast "union schools" and "free schools", since unionization is one of the major differences, and probably the biggest reason for our current system and its woes.

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