Only about 35,000 students nationwide use school vouchers -- public funds for private education. But from statehouses to Capitol Hill, there are frequent rounds of sparring over expanding this form of school choice.

 "It seems like for every leap forward, there are some steps backwards," says Chad d'Entremont, assistant

director of the National Center for the Study of Privatization in Education, a nonpartisan group at Columbia University's Teachers College in New York. "There was a sense a few years ago that after the high-profile failure of some voucher laws trying to make their way through state legislatures, the consensus among school-choice advocates was to move on to other initiatives.... [But] there hasn't really been a backing off of voucher reforms -- they continue to be proposed and debated."

 

This article appeared in the March 22, 2007 edition of the Christian Science Monitor. www.csmonitor.com/20070322/p13s02-legn.html