Novel Voucher Plan Suffers Resounding Defeat in California

By Lynn Olson

In a stinging setback for private-school-choice advocates nationwide, California voters last week rejected the nation's most ambitious school-voucher initiative by a seven-to-three margin.

The fight over school vouchers is far from finished, however. The same day that California's Proposition 174 went down, voters in New Jersey and Virginia elected Republican gubernatorial candidates who have backed the school-voucher concept. (See story, page 17.)

Proposition 174 would have given parents a tax-funded voucher--worth about $2,500 per child in 1994-95--to spend at any participating public,...