Vouchers are tuition subsidies for students in public schools to attend private schools and/or for students already in private schools. Proponents for publicly funded school vouchers see them as a way for poor parents to leave a failing public school system and allow their children to go to the school of their choice. Opponents fear that school vouchers would take money away from public schools, causing grater segregation while not helping the majority of students remaining in the public school system. The Catholic Church supports school vouchers and believes that every person should have equal opportunity to send there children to the best schools regardless of there financial situation. This paper will attempt to explain the complex arguments around the issue of publicly funded school vouchers, so that one could understand both sides of this issue.

             Voucher programs allow students to take a portion of funds reserved for public education to put toward private education. The major supporters of school vouchers are poor parents, and the Catholic Church. Before 1999, the Catholic Church had been one of the chief enemies of all federal grants for education. Then the Hierarchy gradually changed direction, and it decided to support federal aid in principle on condition that any specific measure should include auxiliary services for Catholic schools. The condition has never been met, and the failure of agreement has created the longest and most caustic church-state controversy in the history of Congress. According to the Church and Catechism it is the obligation of the state that "public subsidies are paid out in such a way that parents are truly free to choose according to their conscience the schools they want for their children." Supporters of such a program believe that allowing students to choose the school they will attend will result in a better education and a more level playing field, where not only middle- and upper-class students dominate the private school system.