As a former teacher you are in a better position than most to honestly assess the problems and difficulties of public education.

You also know that there are no easy answers to the reforms of the school system and 1,000 honest educators will have 1,000 partially valid suggestions for solution.

You said, >"The name of the game is giving all students the best possible education, not necessarily a public school education. One size does not fit all, and throwing ever increasing amounts of money at failing systems only serves to reward failure."

I can't help but agree with you here. But I can't understand the willingness to "throw out the baby with the bathwater." This is what vouchers will do and in a most destructive and dangerous manner.

The voucher movement betrays the vision of public schools as being essential to democracy and the reproduction of an informed citizenry.

Perhaps you objected to the rules and regulations when you were teaching? This doesn't mean you have to approve of sending kids to voucher schools where there is no oversight, no requirements for the teachers, no curriculum that needs to be followed. The Flat Earth society could be providing the text books and no one can object. If as a parent you object to banning Harry Potter books, or Catcher in the Rye, or anything--you have the right only to remove your child from the school.

If government tries to impose the same accountability rules on voucher schools as on public schools, it rus the risk of "entanglement" in religion, violating church-state separation. In Milwaukee no academic data has been collected from voucher schools in over six years.

The answer to complex problems is seldom a simple one--vouchers are for the simple.

Remember why you were a teacher back when you were one.