A Study Of The Implementation Of American School Vouchers

The school voucher system is a new method of distribution of educational resources and a increasingly popular policy being adopted in education reform today. Governments no longer funded schools directly, but distributed the funds to students and parents according to certain accounting methods. Students and parents them choose the schools and they prefer use the education vouchers as all or part of educational costs. Through school vouchers, reformers seek to achieve a variety of purposes, such as promoting the school-choice system, enhancing the efficiency of education and ensuring a fair education and so on. At the end of the 1980s, the education voucher system first appeared in the United States, and then other countries began to experiment with it. However, given the current state of development of the process, the status of implementation is still insufficient, so studying the implementation of school voucher in the USA is a meaningful issue.This thesis is divided into three parts mainly.In the first chapter, the author analyze is the theoretical basis of school voucher in America and its practical application. In the 1970s, neo-liberalism became the guiding thought of political, economic and social development in the USA. Thus, neo-liberalism heavily influenced educational reform. Milton Friedman, Who is one representative of the neo-liberalism, first proposed the idea of school voucher. On this basis, many scholars such as Christopher Jencks developed the idea.In the second chapter, the author inspects the implementation of school vouchers in the United States. There are two kinds of school vouchers, namely, the one funded by the government and the one funded privately; both have had an important impact on education of reform."The Milwaukee Parental Choice Program"is the first school voucher scheme in America; Florida is the first state to implementation education voucher statewide."Educational Choice Charitable Trust"and"Children's Scholarship Fund"are two representatives of private school vouchers.In the third Chapter, the implementation of the school voucher system is evaluated. School vouchers have been quite successful and have helped to improve the quality of education and promote the democratization of education. However, there are still several controversial issues that must be faced. For example, education vouchers may harm the structure of education, challenge the exciting laws and cause an unstable political environment.