Pros

According to proponents:

• Enable more families to take advantage of a wide range of education opportunities, especially through policies targeted to students in low-performing schools and/or from low-income families.
  
  
• Encourage competition between public, private and parochial schools, and force the public schools to improve to retain their students.
  
  
• Increase the demand, as well as the revenues, for private and parochial schools, allowing financially struggling schools to remain open and leading to the establishment of new schools.
  
  
• In the case of tax credits and tax deductions, lower taxes for parents of school-age children, letting them keep more of their own money to spend as they see fit.

• Divert dollars from publicly accountable schools to private and parochial schools, in which taxpayers lose their right to know how public dollars are spent and what results these dollars produce.
  
  
• Lower the quality of public education by increasing the segregation of the public, private and parochial schools along socioeconomic lines.
  
  
• Force the state to inappropriately endorse one religion over another and unduly cross the tenuous lines separating church and state within the federal constitution and state constitutions.
  
  
• In the case of tax credits and tax deductions that require families to pay the private or parochial school tuition before they are reimbursed (via the tax credit and/or tax deduction) on their next tax return, help wealthy families more than low-income families.