One of the most important elections to occur so far this year is one you probably haven’t heard of. Last week in Georgia, Republican primary voters cast ballots on an advisory question: “Should Georgia empower parents with the right to use the tax dollars allocated for the education of their children, allowing them the freedom to choose among public, private, virtual, and home schools?” The verdict was clear: 75 percent of Peach State Republicans said “yes”.
The result was a sweeping and deep. Over 580,000 Republicans voted on this question, more than voted in the Senate primary that was at the top of the ballot. The measure carried every county, and won handily even in high-income, high-education areas that have traditionally been resistant to school vouchers. It was simply the biggest election win for education choice advocates ever.
The wording of the question probably had a lot to do with that. Instead of using loaded words like “vouchers,” it focused on the core element of choice. Instead of offering a promise of public money, it simply said that parents should be able to choose how to use the money the state was already going to spend on their child. And, crucially, it gave home schoolers skin in the game. About 3 percent of Georgia children are homeschooled; since we know that homeschoolers tend to be white, religious, and from two-parent households, the share of Republicans homeschooling their children is surely much higher than that.
The Georgia Opportunity Society’s Jamie Lord spoke about this on OpinionJournal tv. Watch her discuss it here.