Discrimination Against Private #SchoolChoice Must Be Fought With Facts
REALITY CHECK: When people know what school choice programs like vouchers actually are, a lot more people support them. (Shutterstock Image) |
The legality of the state Department of Education’s policy is a matter of debate. The law creating the program specifically refers to “private day or residential schools,” and the statute concerning the approval of private schools includes “at-home instruction.” Negri might have a strong case if there were anybody to take up the issue on her behalf. As a matter of public opinion, however, her daughter’s situation may be in a gray area, and it’s an area to which school choice advocates should seek to provide some color.
Across the country, Americans support the concept that parents should be able to choose their children’s schools, but the support depends on the type of school and the way the question is asked. According to a poll recently released by Phi Beta Kappa and Gallup, 64 percent of Americans “favor the idea of charter schools,” and the same percentage of respondents “favor allowing students and their parents to choose which public schools in the community the students attend.”
When it comes to “allowing students and parents to choose a private school to attend at public expense,” however, favorability drops to 31 percent, with 57 percent opposed. The poll authors conclude that “the public does not support vouchers.” Another recent poll conducted by the Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice has different findings.
Actually, the findings aren’t different so much as they are more telling. On charters, Friedman finds 53 percent in favor, although the difference largely goes to the “don’t know” response, rather than opposition. Asked about “school vouchers,” the respondents return a 39 percent favorable rating, with 26 percent opposed. Those results are reasonably close to PBK/Gallup’s.
However, when Friedman changes the question to explain how vouchers actually work — including the details that they use “tax dollars currently allocated” for the students and may “pay partial or full tuition” — favorable opinions increase to 61 percent, and opposition increases to 33 percent.
In Negri’s state of Rhode Island, the results are similar, with favorability at 40 percent with no definition, increasing to 56 with an explanation. Friedman has conducted the same poll in a number of states, and the pattern is similar as well. Minnesota voucher favorability increases from 40 to 64 percent with an explanation. Delaware from 45 to 70. Oklahoma from 41 to 59. Nevada from 37 to 61.
In all of those cases, too, opposition starts out much lower than in the PBK/Gallup poll. Saying that school choice is done “at public expense” understandably sparks a negative reaction. By explaining that the money is going to be spent on the student’s education one way or another and that school choice doesn’t necessarily mean covering the entire tuition at a private school–however much it might be–completely flips the outcome.
These findings result from deeper issues than mere word choice. For instance, the Friedman polls also regularly find that Americans dramatically underestimate the amount of money that the public school system spends per student. Many may reasonably think that private schools are more expensive, particularly if the image is of elite boarding schools. But that’s not necessarily the case.
More importantly, as Julie Negri’s daughter discovered, the principle that the public should invest in an educated population has to some degree transformed into a sense that the public’s investment should only be in a government-run education franchise. In that case, a dual-enrollment policy that funds high-school students’ attendance of college for credit at both the high school and college levels is more like a special benefit of the government’s educational product.
That philosophy works out well for those who work for or are invested in the government franchise and who want to see its reach expanded, because every new taxpayer-funded offering is another feature with which private schools and home-school families cannot compete. The evidence suggests, however, that Americans continue to hold a more expansive view of their investment.
Americans’ view is poorly formed, though. School choice advocates will have to find ways to make the public think about their beliefs, and that may require more than a periodic op-ed about discrimination.
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Justin Katz (@JustinKatzRI) contributed this article to Watchdog Arena, Franklin Center. Katz is the research director of the RI Center for Freedom & Prosperity and managing editor of The Ocean State Current.
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PLEASE, Please, Get Your Family & Friends To Take The Time To Understand What TED CRUZ Will Do For AMERICA!!!
Better Yet Get Them To Read
A TIME FOR TRUTH
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