Note that persons on both sides of the question favor public education. The difficult question is whether funds should be diverted from public schools in order to fund education at private schools. The question is acute, because in the U.S., many unaccredited public schools have per-student costs more than twice the tuition of accredited private schools in the same area. In many areas, the accredited private schools also have superior educational outcomes.
The theory in favor of "educational choice" is that parents and students are strongly concerned with the quality of education received by students. Therefore, if given a choice, they will seek out the best educational institution they can afford. Tax credits would enable tax payers to have more educational options. Vouchers would extend this choice to the poorest members of society by subsidizing their choices with public money that would have gone to public schools.
The advantage to society is supposed to be twofold. First, people will be as well educated as possible. Second, that the available money for education will tend to flow to the best available learning methods, and institutions and possibly even save a lot of money.
The primary criticism is that diverting money from public schools cannot make them better. Critics also charge that the assumptions are false: It is said that neither parents nor children are qualified to evaluate educational systems. Also, critics say that commercial schools will be organized for maximum profit, rather than for most effective learning, and therefore the costs will be high, and the education no better than existing public schools.
There is a further discussion concerning whether it is moral to force people of one religion to fund (via taxes and redistribution) education in another religion's schools.
Most persons consider a tax credit for private education to be morally acceptable, because the money comes from the parents' taxes. In the U.S., this argument has been accepted by federal judges.
In the U.S., the legal and moral precedents for vouchers may have been set by the G.I. bill, which includes a voucher program for university-level education of veterans. The G.I. bill permits veterans to take their educational benefits at religious schools, an extremely divisive issue when applied to primary and secondary schools. Voucher systems for primary schools have quietly operated in some New Hampshire school districts since education became mandatory in the 19th century.
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