Going halfway like is proposed now will only make the split between private and public schools even wider. The way I see it, this country needs to make a serious choice if it wants to reform the schools.

1)Make a concerted effort to rejuvinate teh public school system, prefferably by allocating some of that defense budget to teacher salaries and renovations.

2)Privatize the school system. Let private companies and individuals run the whole thing. Use the current education budget to provide full vouchers and partial scholarships to those that can't afford it. Everyone knows that private school education is better than the vast majority of public schools, so why not give that opportunity to everyone? And once schools are run for profit, they will be run much more efficiently. No more run down classrooms and underpaid/underqualified/overworked teachers. This also gives parents a choice as to what kind of education their childs recieves. It gives alternatives to the state-run system (which everyone knows teaches one point of view and not much else). Of course there would be some basic standardization and accredidation process (similar to how it's done for colleges and universities), which would make sure that students are prepared for life after school.

As you can probably gather, I'm for the second option.
----------------------------------------
Between me and every ideal I always find Scheisskopfs, Peckems, Korns, and Cathcarts. And that sort of changes the ideal.
--Yossarian