The Citizen goes after vouchers

• Public schools are held accountable. Indeed, under No Child Left Behind, they constantly have to demonstrate student performance on many subjects in multiple grades.

But at least citizens have plenty of data by which to gauge the performance of public schools, and that transparency is constantly increasing.

Parochial and other private schools need not divulge a thing – neither test scores nor anything about staff or student behavior or misbehavior. Everything's a secret. So why should tax dollars go to clandestine, for-profit schools? They should not.

• Our public schools also must admit everyone – kids with physical disabilities, learning disabilities, behavioral problems, language barriers. Private schools can skim the cream off the top and bar everyone they don't want.

• Public schools provide diversity; most of them teach our kids the reality of this melting pot republic, and none of them discriminate on any level – ethnic, economic, religious. But private schools can admit solely Catholic kids, or only Jewish kids, or only kids with certain academic achievement levels. Many of them countenance a homogenous environment, which isn't the way of this world.