I was wondering if anyone knew of a site that talks about the history of school vouchers? like the different cases etc.

This New Internationalist article (published in 1999 - be careful not to get your George Bush's mixed up) traces the idea of education vouchers back to Friedman in the 1950's, with their first use in Chile in the 1980's:

"Chile introduced education vouchers in 1980 as part of the Pinochet regime’s radical adoption of the economist Milton Friedman’s free-market policies. The country became a laboratory for extreme monetarism and the envy of right-wingers like Reagan and Thatcher. School vouchers were themselves originally Friedman’s idea – he had proposed the scheme unsuccessfully in the US of the mid-1950s. But in Chile his dream came true. Private schools were subsidized by the State and competed against public schools run by local government. All students were given a voucher, though private schools had the right to refuse to accept the vouchers of children who could not afford top-up fees.

There were three main results. First, there was a huge exodus of middle-class children into private schools, so that by 1990 only half the children from the middle-income bracket were going to municipal schools. Second, total spending on education in Chile plummeted even when parental contributions were included: from 5.3 per cent of GNP in 1985 to 3.7 per cent in 1990, as the State started to feel less sense of responsibility for education in general. Third, standards of achievement dropped – especially for students from low-income families."

I see that one result of the system was that middle class children abandoned state schools. Pretty predictable I'd have thought. Well Yafa, here are more subtle examples.

The dreamed of equality and mixing of children of all backgrounds equally may not be readily accepted by all !

Under the UK system children are assigned to state schools according to where they live. Schools in some areas either are or are perceived as being much worse than others elsewhere. So middle class families move around. A report in the press shows that families are prepared to, and do, pay £40,000 ( c $65,000 ) more to buy a home simply because it is in a better school area .

Equally some areas have poor state schools but are themselves highly desirable. Tony Blair himself, pre-Prime Minister, lived in one such area of London. Parts of his became entirely populated by ambitious, well paid, mostly young families living just down the road from their economic, class and cultural opposites .House prices shot up. So what to do about the schooling ? Well, the 'area' rules do not apply if a school is of a religious foundation and will accept the child.

Surprisingly, Mr Blair himself, a protestant, sent his children across London to a different area to attend a Catholic school . Mrs Blair is Catholic.Where he was must have a high native population of Catholics ; much of it was built to house Irish workers on the canals and railways; but Mr Blair sent his children to a different borough to a Catholic founded school.

This was subject to adverse comment. Some of us were surprised too; a Catholic founded school refused even to consider my step-daughter because I was a protestant though her mother and (natural) father were both Catholics !