You might think it’d be relatively easy to ask, “Do you support or oppose school vouchers?” in an opinion poll to gauge public support of the concept, but it’s more complicated than that.
Let’s review two recent polls on school choice.
The 2016 Education Next poll asked respondents about school vouchers, but never actually used the label “school vouchers” in its questions. Using four questions, vouchers got anywhere from 29 percent support to 45 percent support.
The concept got the most support when the question was worded as, “A proposal has been made that would give all families with children in public schools a wider choice by allowing them to enroll their children in private schools instead, with government helping to pay the tuition. Would you favor or oppose this proposal?”
When the question was changed to take out the language about “wider choice,” support fell to its lowest point.
Surprisingly, under all four descriptions, Democrats were more likely than Republicans to support the concept.
The Education Next Poll was conducted in May and June 2016. A poll sponsored by the American Federation for Children conducted in January 2016 showed different results.
That poll explicitly used the phrase “school vouchers,” finding that 53 percent of likely 2016 voters supported “school vouchers to allow individual parents to use public funds to pay for tuition at private or religious schools.”
That’s 8 percentage points higher than any wording in the Education Next poll. Could it be that school vouchers enjoy a branding bonus (unlike Common Core’s branding problem) that people actually react positively to when the term “school vouchers” is used?
That would be surprising, given that the school choice movement has tried to rename vouchers as “opportunity scholarships.” After all, the Google results for “school vouchers” are much more negative than the results for “opportunity scholarships.”
The American Federation for Children poll found that people were 12 percentage points more likely to support “opportunity scholarships” than “school vouchers.”
It does seem important to use the term “school vouchers” for accurate opinion polling. When programs are proposed in state legislatures, teachers’ unions will inevitably frame the proposal as a “voucher scheme” and local media are likely to use “school vouchers” in headlines.
That’s not to say the programs themselves shouldn’t be called “opportunity scholarships” for branding reasons.
The usual caveats with polling results apply. It’s notably difficult to poll on issues because opinions can vary widely depending on question wording.
Survey respondents often give the answer they think the pollster wants to hear (The American Federation for Children poll was conducted by a Democratic polling firm). No two polling samples are the same and different polling methods can yield different results.
That said, it would be interesting to see the results of a single poll that surveys support for school vouchers, both with and without the term used.
Jason Russell is a commentary writer for the Washington Examiner.
