I think the voucher system, whether it's vouchers for education or anything else, is an important transition tool for moving away from government-run services. It is an effective way of divorcing public welfare funding from public operation of the service (and thus no competition, etc). It robs liberals of their #1 argument, which is that only a public school system can guarantee that EVERY child is given an education. Well, a voucher system can guarantee that too!
In the education sector, the idea that education might be better left to the private sector is, for a majority of Americans, inconceivable. This is primarily because they don't understand how the free market works, so when they think of private schools, they think of the expensive ones the rich kids go to. They don't understand that the existence of public schools is exactly why there aren't any private schools trying to "compete" for the lower/middle-class students. The public schools receive the money of not only all parents with children (including those who send their kids to private school) but also all parents WITHOUT children (or whose children are no longer in school). This is highly anti-competitive.
So rather than try to re-educate the public on free market principles, which as we all know is a difficult job, the voucher system is a nice way of saying "let private schools compete. If they're really worse than/more expensive than the public schools, no harm done." And the voucher system reintroduces competition without giving those who say "what about those who can't afford to pay for school" a valid counter-argument.
Once private schools are back in the marketplace and wiping the floor with the public schools, it will be MUCH easier to gain traction on the argument that we should abolish public schools and vouchers altogether.
Think about healthcare. If the government had been the exclusive provider of healthcare for the past quarter-century, how much harder would it be to gain popular support for privatizing it?
The voucher system is an opportunity. It's not about being "better than nothing." It's a major step forward on the eventual path to a free market in education, just like auditing the Fed is a major step forward on the road to abolishing it. It's a way to show people who see the communities their kids grow up in but who aren't having debates in online forums or reading op-ed pieces, that private schools aren't just for the rich. A well-run private school would wipe the floor with the average public school.
