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Article: School Vouchers
- Article from:
- Dictionary of American History
- Author:
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SCHOOL VOUCHERS
SCHOOL VOUCHERS,
state-funded tuition payments for students at private or public elementary and secondary schools emerged in the late 1900s as the most sweeping of the so-called parental choice reforms, and encompass divergent groups of supporters. The history of school vouchers dates back to 1792 when the revolutionary Thomas Paine proposed a voucher-like plan for England, but popular and legislative support in the United States did not begin until the early 1950s, when states in the Deep South and Virginia established tuition grants to counter anticipated school desegregation. In a 1955 article, economist Milton Friedman proposed vouchers as free-market education, to ...