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 n the
spring 2002 edition of Education
Next, Stanford University professor Terry M. Moe accuses
the Phi Delta Kappa education association of "cooking the questions"
about vouchers in its annual survey to produce an anti-voucher result.
Whether PDK
is "framing" the questions raises a different question:
Why should opinion polls be used to determine if American schoolchildren
should receive school vouchers? Even if PDK is correct that only
34 percent of Americans support vouchers, 34 percent of the 53 million
school kids would still mean that there are more than 17 million
families that want an alternative to the public schools.
There is always
a solution to resolve disputes about what the public wants: Give
people the freedom to choose. As long as people are answering the
question about vouchers in the abstract, with no immediate impact
on their lives regardless of how they answer, we can never possibly
know how many people support vouchers.
Many polls simply show that Americans are uninformed about public
policy issues. According to a Washington Post survey conducted
in February, a month after Bush signed the No Child Left Behind
Act, respondents were read the statement: "Congress passed
an education reform bill this year and President Bush has signed
it into law." Forty-four percent said that was true, 16 percent
said it was false and 40 percent said they didn't know.
A May 2000
Washington Post/Kaiser/Harvard survey asked respondents if
they knew what the term "school voucher" meant. Forty-four
percent of registered voters said they did not. In a 1999 Public
Agenda/Charles A. Dana Foundation survey, 63 percent of Americans
said they knew very little or nothing at all about school vouchers
and how they work. Phi Delta Kappa/Gallup certainly is aware of
Americans' apparent lack of knowledge when it comes to education.
About half of respondents in the 2000 Phi Delta Kappa/Gallup survey
said they had not heard or read about charter schools.
Compounding
the unawareness of respondents is that polls fail to include costs
along with benefits and don't present citizens with the hard decisions
that will come later. People can tell pollsters that they want decreased
class size, higher salaries for teachers, computers in every classroom,
and increased funding for education in general because economic
reality is optional in polls.
This is why
choice is essential. We can't be sure how many people really support
public schools until they are given an option to leave them. We
will find out how much people want to reduce class size, put computers
in classrooms or increase the salaries of teachers once they have
options. Instead of a one-size-fits-all model, some parents will
choose schools with smaller classes while others will opt for schools
with more computer technology. Still, others will choose schools
where teachers are paid more.
What does PDK think about Prof. Moe's accusations? A spokesman for
the organization told the Washington Post that it is "framing"
a response to Moe. That is an unfortunate word to use, considering
that Moe has accused PDK of "framing" the questions to
enhance bias against vouchers. PDK will probably claim that Moe
unfairly failed to mention that the reworded question also found
44 percent support for vouchers a few years ago or that the alleged
reworded question was actually asked in 1991, not 1993 as Moe wrote.
Or PDK may come up with a methodological explanation that most Americans
won't care about.
Here's one
thing PDK won't say: We are so sure that Americans oppose vouchers,
as our polls demonstrate, that we support giving a school voucher
to every American child.
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