May 7, 2009 12:27PM # Vouchers and Violence By [David Boaz](https://www.cato.org/people/david-boaz) --- SHARE The front page of the tabloid *Washington Examiner* blares > Violence mars students’ days > Weapons, assaults common at area schools Now I know that headlines have to be short to fit the space. But a more accurate headline would read > Weapons, assaults common at government-run schools Fights, sexual assaults, and deadly weapons, [described in the article](http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/local/Danger-zones-Violence-a-daily-fact-of-life-in-area-schools-44478222.html) as happening “almost once a day at some area high schools,” are [almost nonexistent](http://www.reason.org/news/show/1007114.html) at private schools. Which is why it’s such a shame that the small number of District of Columbia students who have been granted a voucher to escape the D.C. public schools are going to lose that lifeline if the Democratic majority in Congress gets its way. I once [proposed](https://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=5446) in the *Washington Post*: > The D.C. school board should declare an educational emergency and offer a voucher good in any private or public school in the District to every student who is assigned to a school that has had a shooting or stabbing or more than one weapon confiscation in the past year, whether on school property or on school buses. I called it the “voucher trigger provision,” but the Post went with the more sober title “A Right to Safer Schools.” But the policy shouldn’t be restricted to D.C. students. The *Examiner* article is in fact not about the D.C. schools; it’s about the suburban schools in Maryland and Virginia. Suburban kids would also benefit from more choice, including the choice to move from dangerous to safe schools. ##### Related Tags [Education](https://www.cato.org/education), [Center for Educational Freedom](https://www.cato.org/center-educational-freedom) [![Creative Commons License](/build/cato_2020/images/creative-commons.svg)](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/) This work is licensed under a [Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/).