If I follow your reasoning, low income families who want to send their children to a private school would need help because they would otherwise be unable to exercise choice in education. Upper-income families would not need help because they already have the means to exercise choice in education. Presumably, in both cases, the surrounding public schools are not acceptable and only the private option is. I think I see the logic in this. I know there are areas in our state where poor performing schools permeate the neighborhoods. There is, however, another group of families for whom choice in education is not an option. Families in rapidly growing areas where all the existing public schools are FULL have effectively lost their ability to choose schools. For those families, should the assistance reach a little higher up the income ladder?

Just because the UBSCT voucher and the Carson Smith voucher weren’t means tested doesn’t mean the broader voucher won’t be. The UBSCT voucher is targeted towards those students who are struggling regardless of family income and was in response to the board’s request for additional funding for remediation. One of the several premises behind the UBSCT voucher is that taxpayers don’t pay anything until the student passes UBSCT, in contrast to the board’s proposal for additional funding with no guarantees that the students would pass.

Voucher opponents have always argued that vouchers will only be used by the rich and the easy to educate. Like the broader, means-tested voucher, the UBSCT voucher is targeted towards the more difficult to educate. The same is true for Carson Smith.

Summary: all three vouchers are targeted towards the generally more difficult and expensive to educate.