POLITICIANS SLOW TO EMBRACE ACADEMIC FREEDOM …
Recent polling in South Carolina showed a major uptick in support for school choice. Is that part of a national trend, though?
According to new data released by Education Next , the answer to that question is “yes.”
“Do Americans support the expansion of choice, especially when it is targeted to disadvantaged students?” the questioners ask. “The answer, it seems, depends on how the program is structured.”
Really?
Because it seems to us as though the response was across-the-board positive …
Sixty percent of respondents support tax credit programs that permit individuals and businesses to contribute to scholarship granting organizations (SGOs) – groups that “distribute private-school scholarships to low-income families.” Only twenty-six percent oppose such programs. Meanwhile 51 percent support vouchers for children stuck in failing public schools compared to only thirty-five percent who oppose. Fifty percent support universal vouchers, compared to 39 percent who oppose.
That’s strong majority support, people … for multiple levels of academic freedom.
Here in the Palmetto State, political leaders have been slow to embrace choice – belatedly approving a limited scholarship program for special needs students. This special needs-only program has been a rousing success, but much more choice is needed to move the achievement needle – especially seeing as our state’s worst-in-the-nation government-run system continues to lose ground (while further dumbing down its standards).
The Education Next survey was conducted in May and June 2014 of an estimated 5,000 respondents. The latest South Carolina data – from April of this year – found that 66.1 percent of South Carolinians support “tax deductions for people who donate money to organizations that provide scholarships for children to attend private or religious schools.”
That’s good news for a movement that has struggled in the court of opinion thanks to the local mainstream media’s slavish devotion to the status quo …
13 comments
struggled in the court of opinion thanks to local mainstream media’s slavish devotion to the status quo…
Or perhaps because parents want actual reform that will fix education across the board, and not just for a select group of people?
And here it is right on time – the weekly article on the school choice farce from Fits.
I’m so glad that I don’t have to care about this crap.
How so?
Probably has no children (or grandchildren) in school and thinks these decisions will not impact him/her. Doesn’t contemplate that the local taxes for schools will rise, significantly, to pay for the damage that will occur when kids clear out of public schools. I can only imagine the good that could be done if the people that keep pushing this “easy” way out would concentrate those resources (time and money) towards making the schools improve. They’re just running and that never fixes anything.
Well, part of that is right. No kids. So really, its someone’s else issue to worry about.
As to the rest of it, I’ve learned one thing about taxes–they never go down. Doesn’t matter what happens, or what I do about it.
Very true, sadly.
I am waiting for this question to be polled.
Should the state pay the the private school tuition of the children of parents who make more than $100,000 a year? Between $75,000 and $100,000 a year? Between $50,000 and $75,000 a year? Between $50,000 and $25,000 a year? Less than $25,000 a year. Lets see where the public is on the real unvarnished issue here. Not the push poll questions.
My problem with these polls is that they ask questions about the finished product not about how we get there.
“Would you like to live in a big house with three bathrooms, a three car garage and an Olympic size swimming pool?”
Never a question about how you will keep the house clean, take care of the cars in the garage or maintain the pool.
That classroom must be at the political re-education center or a teacher’s
indoctrinationtraining college. What’s with the big two way mirror and regimented rows of desks? I’m in 100+ classrooms a year and have never seen a room as neat as that one.I see a cross above the chalk board so I reversed searched it out of curiosity. It in De La Salle University in Manilla, Philippines
S.C. has a wonderful school choice program.
Send your kids to any school you want, including any private school.
But, don’t rob tax money from the public school system to support private schools.
sic(k) willie and Howie the Voucher Clown keep changing the name, but a voucher scam is a voucher scam – even if you call it a tax credit.
Regardless of what you call it, the voucher scam only hurts those who need help the most. The voucher scam is a fraud, which is why the honest members of the S.C. Legislature have been flushing it down the toilet year after year after year.
Keep listening for that giant sucking sound as the S.C. Legislature keeps sending the voucher scam tax credit fraud into the sewer.
BIN News Editorial Staff
Flair and Balanced
bravo!