OK, I'll talk about each point in order. First with the Constitutional issues. There are none with voucher driven private education. We are doing it currently, and it has been deemed to be free from those issues, and I agree with that analysis. If you give someone money to spend on education, and they choose to spend it on education that contains a religious aspect, that is the individual spending on religion based on their choice, not on government coercion. What I'm generally referring to when I seek to have completely private education, is to have a 100% voucher driven program.

As to efficiency, it's hard to say. First off, I agree with you regarding the "lazy teachers" point. I think its a minor contribution to the problem, and is mostly related to the difficulty of removing poor workers from a union system in general. And I do think it sucks up too much of the debate compared to its real impact on the problem.

But with regards to larger issues of community, I think we have a Catch-22. People say you can't have good performing urban schools until the economic situation there improves, but you can't improve the economic situation without better education. One way to combat that problem, is to give parents in those areas the money to spend on schooling directly. Thats like an automatic economic infusion into urban areas, even if it equals what we currently spend on public schools right now. This has a couple effects:

1. It gets them immediately involved. They'd have to pick a school for their child, instead of having one assigned to them.

2. It's their money to spend. Just like people have incentive to spend food stamp money wisely, I think that giving parents voucher money to spend will make them watchful over the education of their child more. You get more parents asking how much bang they're getting for their buck.

3. It forces schools to be more competitive. The better schools you get, the more students and money they will get, so schools will have incentive to do better. And unlike today's system where schools can game the system through teaching to tests, and dumbing down curriculums, private schools have to convince individual parents that their child is doing well. Thats harder to game.

4. It builds community. Parents are free to send their children to schools based on common beliefs, or neighborhoods, or other things that are important to them. That helps build communities, not tear them down. Its certainly better than bussing kids around the city.

I'm sure I could think up more, but thats all I got at the moment.