I ' m glad you actually highlighted Ivy League schools as an example , because it ' s particularly instructive for how awful a voucher system could be , and I would know because I spent half my career working in Ivy League admissions before my current gig . The Ivy League system mostly exists to cement the power and status of rich people . The schools pay lip service to a mission beyond entrenching the status quo with pretty glitzy financial aid programs , for every legitimately poor person they ' re giving ' a shot ' to , they ' re bringing in 2 or 3 people who have had most every advantage in life . Furthermore , the perception that Ivy League schools ' are the best ' is mostly affirmed by rankings , the predominant weighting of which comes from administrators judging each other ' s schools and admissions selectivity as opposed to say , propensity to afford social mobility , or actual learning skill development . On the other end of the spectrum you have hundreds of schools that take public money in the form of student loans and offer zero or negative value not just to the people pursuing the education but also the public who are subsidizing the cost collectively . I do agree , as evidenced by my career choices , that public education needs competition and that a great school in one area serves as an example for emulation at the traditional public school level that encourages those schools to be better in most aspects of operations . But in order to function , we all have to agree on a base set of valuesoutputs that we can more or less collectively agree signals school quality , and judge the schools that exist by that criteria . Again , with very little standard or accountability system , private schools receiving public education funding would work similarly to higher ed , but on a much more massive scale . Replicating the failures of American higher education at the K 12 level would be a catastrophe . Vouchers , if they ever came to pass , would need very strict accountabillity measures , and I doubt private schools would acquiesce to the spotlight on their outcomes and operations anyway .