What Utah means: response to Tom

Tom asks if I agree with him that "a real emphasis on empowering the poor calls for the program to be targeted at modest incomes.  The subsidiarity-based strategy of school choice should act in the service of a more progressive (i.e. modest-income-focused) allocation of government spending on education." 

I "sorta" do.  It certainly does appear that, politically, it makes more sense to push for voucher programs targeted specifically (the more specifically the better) to helping poor children, or children otherwise not provided with educationally sound government-run alternatives.  That said, I regard the case for educational choice as being not only about competition, and not only about assisting the poor, but also about religious freedom and value-pluralism.  It could well be that there are families who are not, strictly speaking, "poor", and whose public schools are not awful, and who would prefer to form their children (as is their duty) through an education that integrates faith into the process, but who cannot afford to.  The common good is, it seems to me, well served by relieving the burden on such parents.

All that said . . . Tom is right that the political realities are what they are.