School Choice : Freedom to Choose Outcomes

Given how the unions still can't come grips with the reality of the new norm, teachers having a choices, the general public seems to choose schools that reflect freedom  for their kids' education.

Wisconsin's move to free the teachers to choose whether they want a union or not has made big changes in how teachers really feel about being under the thumb of a few elites that don't represent them or their beliefs.

The vote to recertify the unions in Wisconsin failed in many districts, something that still can't be understood by the unions. Governor Scott Walker's Act 10 has changed the public school mentality for the better, and has opened the debate even further on charter schools and school choice.

Support for School Choice
Source: Dick M. Carpenter, "School Choice Signals: Research Review and Survey Experiments," Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice, January 7, 2014.
January 14, 2014

School choice supporters have a lot of work to do before school choice policies can be implemented on a widespread basis, says Dick Carpenter, a professor at University of Colorado -- Colorado Springs.

• Respondents in Carpenter's study rated smaller class sizes, more technology and greater accountability ahead of school choice as the best ways to improve schools.
• These are structural, status-quo reform options.
• This, combined with the fact that the same respondents rated public schools somewhere between "poor" and "fair," indicates that school choice supporters need to overcome an ideology that largely supports traditional public school models.

In general, however, public choice -- most often in reference to charter schools -- has been viewed favorably in nationwide school choice polls.

• Support for charter schools usually sits around 43 percent.
• Notably, however, this does not mean that there is 57 percent opposition.
• In fact, support for charter schools is usually twice the percentage of opposition to charter schools.
• The remainder of people in these polls have no opinion.

When survey respondents were given six different school choice options, they most favored tax credits and least favored low-income vouchers. There were only minor differences among the remaining types of choice.

Most participants who favored school choice options did so for one of three reasons -- freedom, competition and equality -- with freedom being the most common.