The Road to School Vouchers in Cleveland: Politics, Interest Groups and Religion

Abstract

The debate on the utilization of school vouchers to fund private and parochial education is one of the most contentious debates in recent memory. Supporters believe vouchers will be a panacea for students in failing schools in predominately poor black communities because they would provide them with the opportunity to enroll in another school of their choice. Critics believe vouchers are a way of jettisoning public schools from the communities while adhering to the shift to a more privatized and marketized form of schooling. This dissertation examines the role of politics, interest groups, and religion in the formulation of school voucher policies in general, but in Cleveland in specific. By interviewing elite stakeholders in Ohio, this researcher found that political ideology, social interest, and religion were critical to the formulation of voucher policies. The idea of vouchers, originally proposed my economist Milton Friedman in 1955 illuminates the problems with the public school system, however, it also illuminates the political and ideological differences in how those problems should be addressed. Also, it was found that the voucher debate is delicate and is often handled with "kid-gloves" politically and sometimes socially. However, the delicate nature of the issue creates opportunities for puzzling alliances