North, who happens to be a very religious man, restricts his critique to the religious restrictions which vouchers in the U.S. would impose, given the history of federal court decisions. In that sense, North is being highly restrained.

But the reality is that, once the government puts itself in the position of issuing educational vouchers, it will inevitably come to impose more and requirements on institutions which receive vouchers. (And, contrary to what Joe commented above, in the extremely unlikely event that homeschooler families could just keep the voucher funds for themselves, increasing requirements on those families would also apply.)

I saw this myself in recent years when California authorized state-funded “charter schools” that were supposed to be independent from the grossly failing standards of the “public” schools. Sure enough, with each passing year, more and more “public” school-type requirements have been imposed on the charter schools, so that now little difference remains. We can expect what few differences which exist to dissolve in the next 5-to-10 years. (Then “public” school advocates can proclaim that charter schools have failed in their mission to surpass “public” schools.)

Voucher education will always eventually fail — sooner rather than later — because, as Leonard Read noted about it, “he who pays the fiddler calls the tune.”