Neal McCluskey
Every year, PDK International, a professional education association, conducts a survey gauging the American public’s views on various education issues. This year’s installment has some encouraging news for private school choice, tough news for public schools, and sobering stats about ending the US Department of Education.
Private Choice
There is highly encouraging information in this survey for private school choice supporters. Most directly, 59 percent of respondents chose “probably send to private or religious school” when asked the following:
If you were offered public funds to cover at least a portion of the cost to send your child to a private or religious school instead, do you think you probably would keep them in public school, or would you probably send them to a private school or to a religious school?
A solid majority would choose a private school, even if they could only cover a portion of the cost with something like a voucher.
This might reflect what the survey found about parents’ satisfaction with the amount of say they have in their children’s schools: 100 percent of private school parents reported being “somewhat” or “very satisfied,” versus only 59 percent of public-school parents. Many Americans might either instinctively realize that parents would have more say in schools that need to attract and keep their business, or they might find that out directly from private-schooling parents they know.
Public Schools
Obviously, the comparison of parental satisfaction above is negative for public schools. The other bad news is that the shares of Americans giving their local public schools and the nation’s public schools overall grades of A or B both dropped to their lowest points on record. Forty-three percent gave their own public schools an A or B, and only 13 percent did so for the nation’s.
Add these grades for public schools to the data on private education, and there is little wonder that we have had an explosion of school choice over the last several years. It is what the public wants.
US Department of Education
Contrary to the theme of more freedom in education, the poll finds that support for ending the US Department of Education is small. At least when framed specifically as support for “President Trump’s plan to eliminate” the Department—which could bias responses by invoking the polarizing president—only 22 percent of respondents favored elimination.
Most likely, the public hears “education” and thinks, “Of course we want funding and federal focus on it—education is good!” To move the public opinion needle, more work needs to be done to explain that the Department is unnecessary, ineffective, and unconstitutional. Oh, and a huge threat to impose values on schools that are unacceptable to many people, which is utterly inconsistent with a free society.
Conclusion
The field is looking more and more open for expanding freedom in education. As long, that is, as we can keep the feds at bay.