It’s no wonder then that Americans want more choices. The most popular private educational choice program was the scholarship tax credit (STC). As the survey prompt explained, an STC program “gives tax credits to individuals and businesses if they contribute money to nonprofit organizations that distribute private scholarships” thereby giving parents “the option of sending their child to the school of their choice,” including private religious or secular schools. Nearly two-thirds of respondents supported them while only one in four were opposed. Support for STCs was even higher among respondents who were parents of school-aged children (67 percent), low-income (67 percent), black (72 percent) or Hispanic (80 percent). These results are similar to the 2012 Education Next survey, which also found that STCs are the most popular form of educational choice with 72 percent in favor.
When asked about “school vouchers” without any definition provided, 43 percent of respondents supported them while 21 percent opposed them. When first explaining that a “school voucher system allows parents the option of sending their child to the school of their choice, whether that school is public or private, including both religious and non-religious schools” using “tax dollars currently allocated to a school district,” support increased to 63 percent and opposition increased to 33 percent. Low-income, black, and Hispanic respondents were even more favorable with between 72 and 74 percent supporting vouchers.
Education savings accounts were more popular than vouchers (without a prompt) but not as popular as tax-credit scholarships, with 56 percent supporting them and 34 percent opposing them. School parents were more favorable (62 percent), as were respondents who were low-income (64 percent), black (68 percent), and Hispanic (68 percent).
By contrast, Americans are more skeptical of government mandates like the Common Core State Standards. Recent surveys have shown that nearly half of Americans are not familiar with Common Core, so how the survey question is asked matters a great deal. As my Cato Institute colleague Neal McCluskey has observed, when the survey question describes Common Core in glowing terms while omitting the federal government’s involvement, support will tend to be quite high. The Friedman survey offers what is likely the fairest question yet asked in a major survey: