Tuesday, August 28, 2018

Support for ed choice grows


The most recent release of the annual Education Next poll "shows significant jumps in support for educational choice," the American Federation for Children points out.
Looking at the consistently worded questions over the years, the 2018 poll showed:
  • Support for publicly-funded scholarships to private schools, also known as vouchers, increased from 45 percent last year to 54 percent this year. And 61 percent of parents support this policy, up from 52 percent last year. 
  • Support for tax credit scholarships to private schools increased from 55 percent to 57 percent.
  • Support for charter schools increased from 39 percent to 44 percent. 
  • Notably, opposition to vouchers has decreased 13 percentage points since 2016, from 44 percent to 31 percent today. (Education Next's Paul Peterson noted last year that the PDK organization's surveys also showed a similar dramatic decrease in the opposition to vouchers: an 18 percentage point decrease over a four-year timeframe.)
  • Hispanic support for vouchers increased dramatically, from 49 percent support last year to 67 percent this year. AFC's National School Choice Poll from January 2018 showed similar results with 72 percent of Hispanics supporting school choice. 
The AP story in The Norman Transcript is here.

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