School Systems in Flux : Parents Making The Decisions

Little wonder why the public school system is attacking the Voucher, Charter and private schools as they are proving to be a good alternative to public education. The public school system has a lot of problems that they won't or can't address to compete for the available tax dollars. The public school mentality believes it is their right to have control of education. The teachers unions are the muscle behind this push back on the alternative schools as this is their source of funding.

It has always been this way and they see no need to make changes now. Remember the results of Gov. Scott Walkers plan, Act 10, to change how the public school system will function in Wisconsin?

An Analysis of Why and How Parents Choose Private Schools
Source: Benjamin Scafidi and Jim Kelly, "More Than Scores: An Analysis of Why and How Parents Choose Private Schools," Friedman Foundation, November 13, 2013.
November 27, 2013

Frustrated by the failure of many local public school districts to educate students adequately, parents, politicians and policymakers are considering alternative systems for the delivery of K-12 education in America, say Jim Kelly, founder and General Counsel of Georgia Community Foundation, Inc., and Ben Scafidi, a professor of economics and director of the Economics of Education Policy Center at Georgia College & State University.

In 2013, Georgia GOAL Scholarship Program, Inc. (GOAL), a tax-exempt, nonprofit student scholarship organization operating under Georgia's Education Expense Credit (i.e., tax-credit scholarship) law, asked the parents of scholarship recipients to complete a survey pertaining to the reasons they chose a private school for their children and the information about private schools that they deem important to the school selection process.

• Georgia provides dollar-for-dollar tax credits for donations to Student Scholarship Organizations, nonprofits that provide private school scholarships.
• Individuals may claim up to $1,000 and married couples filing jointly may claim up to $2,500.
• An individual who is a member of an LLC, a shareholder of an "S" corporation, or a partner in a partnership may claim up to $10,000 of their tax actually paid as a member, shareholder or partner.
• Corporate taxpayers may claim up to 75 percent of their total tax liability. The program is capped at $58 million in tax credits per year.
• Surveyed parents were overwhelmingly satisfied with their private school choice, with 98.6 percent of parents being "very satisfied" or "satisfied" with their decision to send their children to a private school using a GOAL scholarship.

The implementation of K-12 school choice programs (e.g., tax-credit scholarships and vouchers) in many states is producing a large number of parents who, for a variety of reasons, have transferred their children from public to private schools.

The top five reasons why parents chose a private school for their children are all related to school climate and classroom management, including:

• "Better student discipline" (50.9 percent), "better learning environment" (50.8 percent), "smaller class sizes" (48.9 percent),"improved student safety" (46.8 percent),and "more individual attention for my child" (39.3 percent).
• Only 10.2 percent listed higher standardized test scores as one of their top five reasons.