Education Support by Parents

For John, BLUF:  Many parents are not happy with how things are going in the schools their children attend.  Further, many of those parents think they are not getting the strait word as to what is happening in those schools.  Finally, the school officials are not doing a good job of appearing to be transparent.♠  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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Edexit:  We Shouldn’t Let the Education Crisis Go to Waste

From Law & Liberty, by Harvard Professor james Hankins, 1 November 2021.

Here is a key excerpt:

The most important factor keeping most American schoolchildren in unionized public schools is undoubtedly cost.  Public schools, after all, are free, and it’s hard to beat free.  Of course they are not really free; they are paid from tax revenues, mostly property taxes, which is to say they are in effect subsidized by wealthier property owners.  Property-tax-paying parents understandably do not want to pay twice to school their children.  To be sure, some public schools are highly rated.  Precisely for that reason, many parents have been willing to pay a premium for homes in townships with good public schools.  While it is true that the “awokening” of public schools has made even the best of them unpopular with most Americans, many parents, for now, will have to stick with their local public schools.  It’s a question of path-dependence: for many Americans, to go private would mean radically altering college funding plans and perhaps push retirement several years further out.  It could mean leaving beloved homes and communities for others with less burdensome property taxes.

What is clear is that a huge proportion of parents with children currently in K-12 public schools would go private if they could afford it.  That much is revealed by the polling data compiled by EdChoice, a non-partisan organization committed to giving American parents more power over their children’s education.  According to EdChoice’s Polling Dashboard, of current K-12 school parents, 83% have actually enrolled their children in district public schools, but only 39% would do so if they had the freedom to choose other kinds of school.  50% would like to send their children to private or charter schools, but only 14% are able to do so.  78% of the general population and 84% of current school parents favor Educational Savings Accounts (ESAs) once informed of how these accounts would work.  Similar numbers favor some kind of public voucher system which would allow parents to decide which schools will receive the public funds allocated for their own child’s education.  EdChoice’s polling data also shows that the last two years have seen a considerable jump in public support for educational choice in general, from the mid-70th percentile in 2018 to the mid-80s in 2020-21.

All this adds up, I believe, to a historic opportunity to set a new direction for American K-12 education.

This should be one of several wakeup calls coming out of the Pandemic.  This is like the imbroglio in Laudaun County, Virginia.  While a number of parents are happy to turn their children over to some school for the education of those children, there are others who are sitting there in silent horror over when it is going on.

This should be a wakeup call for school systems and teachers unions and teachers colleges.  Public Institutions depend upon public approval,  It is eroding for schools.  We should all be dedicated to fixing this.

Hat tip to the InstaPundit.

Regards  —  Cliff

♠  I would say, with regard to transparency, our local Lowell School District was doing an excellent job of being transparent, right up until the Bob Hoey imbroglio.  Since they they have not been as open to all branches of the media, which is sad.  Perhaps post election things will open up again.