It is said by school voucher opponents that Referendum 1 will spell the doom of independence for private schools in Utah. They see any government money that flows in any way toward private schools as an invitation for government meddling and future mandates. If you take government money, you become subject to government control -- or so the argument goes.

During the last legislative session, there were even a couple of private schools that said they were not interested in vouchers precisely because they feared vouchers would erode independence.

This is a fair subject for examination. We have done so, and we believe that the key questions were properly asked and answered by the Legislature. No government money is provided to any private school. Scholarship payments are made directly to parents. From a legal standpoint, vouchers work pretty much like an individual tax credit.

The fear that private schools will lose independence is a red herring. The government only acquires leverage to the degree that a recipient wants -- and continues to take -- government money with strings attached. If you stop taking the money, the mandates disappear.

In fact, government interference can be neutralized at the drop of a hat, which is why Utah's recent revolt against the federal No Child Left Behind Act attained such momentum. Many felt the state could manage schools just fine without being shackled by the rules of NCLB, which came attached to federal dollars.

Despite this fundamental truth, however, opponents remain unhappy because they point out (correctly) that Utah's voucher law requires checks to be mailed to the private school, where voucher parents are required to restrictively endorse the check to that school. To opponents, the process looks like a smoke screen for what is really a direct government payment to a private school.

But there is a huge difference between the voucher payment procedures designed by the Legislature and direct government payments. Here's an example:

You could walk into a grocery store with your federal tax refund check and endorse it to the store. (Yes, there was a day when grocery stores accepted third-party checks.) When you endorse the check, which was originally made out to you, it then becomes payable to the store, exactly as though you wrote a check from your personal bank account.

Such an endorsement of your tax refund check would not suddenly transform that check into a direct government payment to the store. The government paid you; then you paid the merchant. Under the logic of voucher opponents, your employer is paying your baby-sitter.

The distinction between private and public payments is important. In short, the method the Legislature outlined for paying a private school with a voucher is a responsible way of ensuring that the money is used for the purpose for which it was intended. It prevents people from blowing it on a Disneyland vacation, making a house payment or buying beer and cigarettes.

It deprives no one of choice, and there are no strings attached from the government that the private school needs to worry about.

This is simply one more case illustrating how voucher opponents have tried to cloud the issues on a nicely conceived piece of legislation that will help thousands of children in Utah attain a better education. If the bill has minor flaws, it can be amended as we go along.

The public schools of Utah do a good job for many, but they are not perfect. Yet we get the distinct impression that many teachers would prefer that nobody evaluate them at all. Too many public educators feel besieged, which is unfortunate. It is not mean-spirited simply to observe that there are students whom the public schools don't serve as well as they should. It's not even surprising.

We can say with certainty, however, that the parents of poorly served students recognize the problem. And recognition of a problem is, of course, the first step to correcting it. The Legislature should be commended for designing a modest way to give parents who never really had a choice the power to choose.

When all the rhetoric is stripped away, this power to choose may be seen for what it is -- the power to demonstrate love. Providing for a child's maximum intellectual development is a fundamental duty of parenthood. By extension it is a proper objective for the state to encourage.