Choice Rising

While school vouchers haven't yet emerged as much of an issue in the presidential campaign (though Mayor Giuliani has been expressing support for them), they are quietly making progress on a state-by-state basis. Georgia earlier this year approved a law that will grant students with special needs vouchers of up to $9,000 a year to attend private schools. Utah passed a law earlier this year providing students with vouchers of up to $3,000 a year; that law will be subject to a statewide referendum in November. In South Carolina, the State this week ran out an article under the headline "Blacks Rethink School Choice." It reported on a "handful of black lawmakers who say they are concerned that S.C. public schools are failing to educate poor and minority children. Their concern could push the state's years-long debate over school choice and vouchers or tax credits for private school tuition over the finish line in 2008."

The Web site of the Milton and Rose Friedman Foundation is a fine way to track these developments on a state-by-state basis, one of the many ways in which Milton Friedman's legacy lives on after his death. With the legislature back in session this week, New York lawmakers have a chance to add the Empire State to the mix by approving Governor Spitzer's proposal to make a portion of private school tuition tax-deductible. Education is primarily a state and local responsibility. The state-by-state progress, though, is appropriate for another reason. It fits the nature of the reform embodied by school vouchers in a better way than a federal voucher law does. After all, part of the attraction of vouchers is the idea that competition, decentralization, and experimentation will lead to improvement. It's true in education policymaking no less than in education.