The latest edition of Public Opinion Watch covers the time period of July 1-5, 2002. This edition and past editions of Public Opinion Watch are available in PDF and HTML formats on The Century Foundation's website at: http://www.tcf.org/Opinions.
Public Opinion Watch is now available on the Tom Paine website, http://www.tompaine.com.
********************************************** Public Opinion Watch July 1-5, 2002
In this edition of Public Opinion Watch:
- Will the School Voucher Movement Surge Forward? - Scandals Drive Support for Business Regulation - Turnout Falls-Even Without an Election!
Will the School Voucher Movement Surge Forward?
Kate Zernike, "Vouchers: A Shift, but Just How Big?" New York Times, June 30, 2002
Dana Milbank, "Bush Urges Wide Use of School Vouchers," Washington Post, July 2, 2002
E. J. Dionne, "Education Reform in the Abstract," Washington Post, July 2, 2002
On June 27th, the Supreme Court ruled that the Cleveland school voucher progra m, which allowed vouchers to be used to attend religious schools, was constitutional. Since one of the big problems always faced by voucher supporters was the possible unconstitutionality of allowing publicly funded vouchers to be used to attend such schools, they were understandably delighted with the decision. President Bush also weighed in on the decision, comparing its import to the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision that ended separate but equal schooling. He indicated his desire to make a strong public push for vouchers, a departure from his reserved rhetoric about the issue during the 2000 campaign and his quick jettisoning of a voucher component in his education reform bill.
Is he (or maybe Karl Rove) onto something? Will the Court decision open the floodgates for a voucher movement that will sweep the nation? Possible but not very likely. The simple fact is that vouchers are not popular-in fact, they have been declining in popularity for several years-and the reasons for that lack of popularity have never had much to do with worries about constitutional status. Therefore, the Court's decision is unlikely to change the basically negative political outlook for vouchers.
Consider the following: In the Gallup/Phi Delta Kappa annual poll on education, probably the best source of public opinion data on education issues, support for vouchers peaked in 1998 and has been dropping ever since. For example, Gallup/PDK has been asking this question for a number of years: "Do you favor or oppose allowing students and parents to choose a private school to attend at public expense?" In 1998, 44 percent of the public expressed support for this idea-the highest ever-compared to 50 percent who were opposed. By 2001, the last survey available, the public was overwhelmingly opposed to this proposition by a 62 to 34 percent margin.
An alternative question wording by Gallup/PDK elicits a somewhat more positive response on vouchers, but the negative trend remains the same. This question talks about allowing parents to send children to any "public, private or church-related school," with government picking up all or part of the tuition for nonpublic school choices. Here provoucher sentiment also peaked in 1998, when the public favored this proposition by 51 to 45 percent. But by 2001 the public had shifted to opposition by 54 to 44 percent.
These are just survey questions, of course. What happens when vouchers are put into play politically and the public hears arguments from both sides during a campaign? To the sorrow of voucher proponents, they have sustained one crushing defeat after another. Most notably, in 2000 vouchers lost in California by 71 to 29 percent and in Michigan by 69 to 31 percent. Ouch! With results like that, it is hard to see the raw materials for a provoucher surge.
So why do the provoucher forces fail to make more headway? Start with the idea that most folks are pretty happy with the schools their children actually attend (see June 17-21 Public Opinion Watch) and hence are not chafing at the bit to get a hold of a voucher that would allow their children to go somewhere else. In fact, when they hear vouchers they tend to worry about money being drained out of their kids' and others' public schools, whereas they feel public schools need every penny they can get and more.
That is why one tends to get responses like the following from the 1999 Gallup/PDK poll. When asked to evaluate two different plans, improving and strengthening the existing public schools versus providing vouchers for parents to use to send their children to private or church-related schools, the public overwhelmingly selected reforming the public schools over vouchers, 70 to 28 percent. Similarly, in a 1998 Peter Harris/Recruiting New Teachers poll, 84 percent of the public chose "doing what it takes to get a fully-qualified teacher in every classroom" over "allowing parents to use money spent on their child's education in public schools for a private education" (only 14 percent). Finally, even when asked to think specifically of parents with children in low-performing schools, the public preferred allowing these parents to send their children to the public school they think best rather than allowing them to send their children to alternative schools, including private schools (58 to 33 percent in a 1999 Penn Schoen Berland/Democratic Leadership Council poll).
Many of these points are summarized in the articles listed above. But the Zernike article makes an additional assertion that is not warranted but has been repeated in a number of media venues. Zernike claims that antivoucher sentiment is driven significantly by another concern: parents in suburbs are reluctant to see vouchers used to allow kids in cities to attend their local public schools. Now, it may be true that, if that aspect of vouchers were pushed, it might elicit considerable opposition. But thus far, the real political debate about vouchers has been about allocating money to allow students to leave public schools for private schools, and there is nothing in the polling record to indicate the public sees the voucher issue any differently.
Hey, but why let lack of data get in the way of making a good point!