"He who pays the piper calls the tune." This is but one example of Federal money coming with strings attached. In principle, there's not really anything wrong with that: Perhaps with some exceptions, a private institution or local government is free to refuse the aid, nearly always requires some type of compliance. For example, some States refuse(d) to alter traffic laws to Federal norms, so they missed out on millions of highway funding. Here in FL, we just passed the first (?) unviersal school voucher system. I don't know the details, but it sounds promising (unless you're a public school official, I guess.) Doubtless there will be legal challenges: "Government money supporting religious institutions!" How so, if the parents freely choose where to have their child schooled? If I could run the program, I would give a flat grant each year to any legally eligible child, with very few strings, maybe allow the State to send poorly-performing students to a school of the State's choice.
Florida's school choice law is not the first, by far, and we already had some other 'scholarships' that allowed taxpayer funds to pay for private schooling, so this is more of an expansion of what already existed. The new law includes homeschoolers, which the previous one(s) didn't. The 'scholarship' method may be a way of ensuring that the funds are used for the education of the child and not the vacation or drugs or alcohol, or whatever, of those parents who would forsake their duty.
"He who pays the piper calls the tune." This is but one example of Federal money coming with strings attached. In principle, there's not really anything wrong with that: Perhaps with some exceptions, a private institution or local government is free to refuse the aid, nearly always requires some type of compliance. For example, some States refuse(d) to alter traffic laws to Federal norms, so they missed out on millions of highway funding. Here in FL, we just passed the first (?) unviersal school voucher system. I don't know the details, but it sounds promising (unless you're a public school official, I guess.) Doubtless there will be legal challenges: "Government money supporting religious institutions!" How so, if the parents freely choose where to have their child schooled? If I could run the program, I would give a flat grant each year to any legally eligible child, with very few strings, maybe allow the State to send poorly-performing students to a school of the State's choice.
Florida's school choice law is not the first, by far, and we already had some other 'scholarships' that allowed taxpayer funds to pay for private schooling, so this is more of an expansion of what already existed. The new law includes homeschoolers, which the previous one(s) didn't. The 'scholarship' method may be a way of ensuring that the funds are used for the education of the child and not the vacation or drugs or alcohol, or whatever, of those parents who would forsake their duty.