Four years after Ohio began giving tax dollars to lowincome Cleveland families to pay their children's tuition to private school, the battle over vouchers is far from over.

Supporters say poor parents should have the same financial freedom as wealthier ones to pluck their children from failing public schools.

Opponents argue that vouchers divert both much- needed money and attention from the public system.

The battle lines were clearly drawn yesterday as a panel of four debated vouchers at a lunchtime gathering of the Metropolitan Club in the Athletic Club of Columbus.

"Choice is the difference between a life on the street and college for some of these children,'' said Nina Shokraii Rees, an education policy analyst with the Heritage Foundation, a conservative research institution in Washington.

Poor children should not be trapped in failing schools simply because their parents cannot afford private- school tuition, Rees said.

Jacqueline J. Cissell, community relations director for the Greater Educational Opportunities Foundation in Indianapolis and another voucher supporter, said many children, including her own, aren't being served in the public school system.

"Because parents don't have money doesn't mean they don't have passion,'' she said. "As many kids as we can, we have to save from failing districts. Let's save those and work on the rest.''

Neither Rees nor Cissell agreed with arguments that voucher supporters are turning their backs on the public school systems.

Rees equated the situation to going to a restaurant. If you don't like the food at one, you go to another, forcing the first one to change its menu or close.

In addition to Cleveland's program, publicly funded vouchers are used in Milwaukee and are permissible in any failing district in Florida. Private organizations back dozens of programs across the nation.

Peter Martinez, working to reform the Chicago public school system through the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, agreed with giving parents choice and encouraging a competition of ideas but said the financial investment needs to be made in the public school system, which is not immune to improvement.

"There are things you can do to turn around public schools,'' he said.

Martinez said he supports rigorous curriculum standards for students and improving the quality of teachers by requiring tougher college coursework, on-the-job mentoring and performance-based licensing.

"A voucher means you take money from public school students and give it to private schools,'' said Michael Billirakis, president of the Ohio Education Association, which represents 124,000 teachers and school support personnel.

Questioning how many parents truly were being given a choice for the first time, Billirakis, a staunch voucher opponent, said that 40 percent of the more than 3,800 students in Cleveland's voucher program were attending private schools before the state began paying their tuition.

He and Martinez also said that vouchers are available to only some students, leaving many behind. Only public schools, they said, are required to accept all children.

"If we're going to invest, let's invest in a high-quality education system for all students,'' Billirakis said.

He said the teachers union supports charter schools -- privately operated and state-funded public schools -- that operate within existing districts, "keeping the money in the public schools.''

"But the money is for the children, not for the public or private school,'' Rees said.

"The opposition has had the time to reform education. They just haven't done it.''