On This Page School vouchers, also referred to as opportunity
scholarships, are state-funded scholarships that pay for
students to attend private school rather than public school.
Private schools must meet minimum standards established by
legislatures in order to accept voucher recipients. Legislatures
also set parameters for student eligibility that typically
target subgroups of students. These can be low-income students
that meet a specified income threshold, students attending
chronically low performing schools, students with disabilities,
or students in military families or foster care. The practice of
state support for private school education has existed in Maine
and Vermont for nearly 140 years. They have ongoing programs
that provide public funding to private schools for rural
students who do not have a public school in close proximity to
their home. However, it was economist Milton Friedman’s 1955
paper, “The Role of Government in Education”, that launched
modern efforts to use public dollars to pay