I agree entirely. The problem with the pro-voucher argument is that it generalizes from a very limited database - the so-called "failing inner city public schools" and applies those problems to *every* public school in the US.
The other problem is with the use of the word "choice." People have had a choice between public & private education since the US Supreme Court ruled in the 1920s that states couldn't make laws banning private schools. Since then, the dividing line is money.
The voucher question from a taxpayer's standpoint is this: why should taxpayers who live in areas which *do* support good public schools have to pay extra taxes to support *both* bad public schools in other districts, AND voucher programs as well? Especially when those taxpayers will NEVER see a dime of voucher money, as the programs are means-tested?
Not true. The voucher movement makes no such generalization. It just wants parents who do have rotten public schools (a great, great number in this nation - particularly in the inner cities) to have the freedom to actually get more than a 4th grade education for their kids - and without the violence, drugs, profanity, homosexual prosyletization that are often present as well. The fact that inner-city parents are crying for vouchers, and the left won't give them to them is one of the cruelest and most arrogant things I've seen from the left in many years (well, after partial birth abortion, that is). Nobody is telling you to take your kids out of public school. They're just asking for a smidgeon of freedom to do so themselves.