> I don't understand why voucher proposals find such limited support.
A traditional stumbling block (though not the only one) is the question of religious schools. Voucher proposals have historically been seen as ways to get the government to fund religion, leading to various backlashes dating back to the 19th century: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blaine_Amendment
A solution could be to only allow vouchers to be used for secular schools, but that runs into opposition from religious conservatives, and it's also unclear if it'd be permissible to exclude all schools run by religious organizations from an otherwise generally available program. I suspect conservative support for school vouchers that allowed religious schools would take a huge nosedive as soon as Islamic schools started taking advantage of them though, which is currently what's causing the Netherlands to rethink its voucher program.
It's kind of bizarre. The government takes the people's money, using its militarized police powers, and then "gives it back" in the form of school funding. If the person then wants to CHOOSE which school they would like their children to attend, which is paid for with the money they had in the first place, then suddenly every lunatic crawls out of their cupboard and starts shouting "But the government is funding religion!"
News flash. The government isn't funding anything. The government produces nothing and their only source of income is theft from productive individuals who do produce things.
Your theory of taxation and funding is quite far from the theory the founding fathers of the U.S. had, which might explain why you find the setup bizarre. I suggest reading some of Thomas Jefferson's writing for the explanation!
A traditional stumbling block (though not the only one) is the question of religious schools. Voucher proposals have historically been seen as ways to get the government to fund religion, leading to various backlashes dating back to the 19th century: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blaine_Amendment
A solution could be to only allow vouchers to be used for secular schools, but that runs into opposition from religious conservatives, and it's also unclear if it'd be permissible to exclude all schools run by religious organizations from an otherwise generally available program. I suspect conservative support for school vouchers that allowed religious schools would take a huge nosedive as soon as Islamic schools started taking advantage of them though, which is currently what's causing the Netherlands to rethink its voucher program.