No Public Consensus Yet on School Voucher Programs

GALLUP NEWS SERVICE

PRINCETON, NJ -- Americans' opinions about the controversial issue of school vouchers have not yet formed into well-defined patterns of either support or opposition. A review of survey research conducted over the past year on the issue reveals a wide range of responses to school choice and school voucher programs -- responses that largely depend on the way in which the programs are described to respondents as the questions are being asked. The data suggest that support intensifies when survey questions say that the programs provide a choice for parents, that only part of the cost might be provided, or that attending religious schools is an option. Support is lowest when the programs are more simply described as providing government funding for students to attend private schools.

The vouchers issue is a complex area of public policy. The idea of providing parents and students with a choice of the way in which they can use public tax monies targeted for education is a concept that can be operationalized into specific programs in a variety of ways. No single voucher program has been advanced nationally, and it is likely that many Americans are only vaguely familiar with the concept.

Still, it is also likely that the issue of voucher programs will become one of the more hotly contested public policy dimensions in the months ahead, given the importance President-elect George W. Bush has placed on some form of "school choice" in both his presidential campaign and his transition discussions of the last several weeks. Education Secretary nominee Roderick Paige, who has supported the concept of vouchers in limited form in the past, was forced to react to criticism of the concept in his confirmation hearings this past week.

Reactions to Voucher Concept Depend on the Way It Is Specified
When survey researchers ask Americans about their level of support for voucher and school choice programs, the responses vary widely based on the way in which the hypothetical program is outlined. Respondents, either because they are unfamiliar with the voucher concept or because they realize that there are many ways in which a voucher program can be set up, apparently listen carefully for cues and details about the program as the question is being read to them, and then respond based on what they hear.

The differences in responses to the varied question wordings can be highly significant. In some surveys, support for a form of a voucher program can be as much as 30% higher than opposition to that program. In other surveys, opposition can outweigh support by up to 18%.

For example, for a voucher program described as one that gives parents and students a choice or an option, one that pays only part of the cost, and one that would allow students to use the vouchers to attend "religious" (as opposed to "private") schools, support can extend well beyond a majority. On the other hand, programs that are described more tersely, without much elaboration, that talk about private schools without mention of "religion," and that make the program sound more like a direct payment to all parents, seem generally to attract significantly lower levels of support.

Gallup/Phi Delta Kappa Surveys
A series of annual surveys conducted by Gallup for the educational society Phi Delta Kappa has included a group of questions measuring the public's attitudes toward the voucher/school choice issue.

In recent years, these surveys have included two different questions about the school choice concept, although neither question used the word "voucher" per se. Support for vouchers has varied from year to year in response to both questions, but this past year, both surveys found less than a majority supporting the concept using either wording.

Here is the shorter wording of the concept used in these surveys, along with the trends on a year-to-year basis:

Do you favor or oppose allowing students and parents to choose a private school to attend at public expense?
	Favor	Oppose
	%	%
2000	39	56
1999	41	55
1998	44	50
1997	44	52
1996	36	61
1995	33	65
1993	24	74

This description of the school choice concept has elicited majorityoppositionin each year in which it has been asked since 1993, although the degree of opposition has varied, from a 50-point margin of opposition in 1993, to only a 6-point opposition margin in 1998. This past year's surveys had a 17-point negative margin. The question uses only the words "private school" (rather than "religious school") to explain the concept of vouchers and does not explain the concept to the extent to which other questions do.

Here is the second wording used in the Phi Delta Kappa surveys:

	A proposal has been made that would allow parents to send their school-age children to any public, private, or church-related school they choose. For those parents choosing non-public schools, the government would pay all or part of the tuition. Would you favor or oppose this proposal in your state?
		Favor	Oppose
		%	%
2000		45	52
1999		51	47
1998		51	45
1997		49	48
1996		43	54
1994		45	54

This wording has generated more positive response from the public. In fact, for 1997, 1998 and 1999, more people supported than opposed the concept, although this past year, support dropped back to a net 7-percentage-point opposition.

Why does the more elaborate wording generate more support? As is always the case in surveys, there may be idiosyncratic survey context effects that could affect the responses to questions. But there are several differences in the wording that may plausibly be causing the differences in support and opposition levels. First, the elaborate wording stresses that the idea is a "proposal," which may suggest reasonableness or that it is a concept subject to further modification. Second, the elaborate question emphasizes any "public, private, or church-related" school, as opposed to just a private school. Third, the elaborate-wording version mentions "allor part" of the tuition.

An Experiment
To more systematically test the implications of these types of variations in the way in which a hypothetical voucher program is described to respondents, a January 5-7 Gallup poll included two different descriptions of the concept, each given to a randomly selected half of the overall sample. The changes in wording produced significantly different responses.

Here are the two questions and the results:

VERSION A Please tell me whether you would vote for or against the following proposition. Would you vote for or against a system giving parents the option of using government-funded school vouchers to pay for tuition at the public, private or religious school of their choice?

 

For	62%
Against	36%
Don't know	2%

VERSION B Please tell me whether you would vote for or against the following proposition. Would you vote for or against a system giving parents government-funded school vouchers to pay for tuition at a private school?

 

For	48%
Against	47%
Don't know	5%

The differences in responses to the two ways of presenting the voucher idea are significant. Version A wins the support of the public by a 26% margin, while version B essentially breaks even.

While the basic form of the questions is exactly the same, three differences were built into the wording used in the two versions:

• Version A includes the phrase "giving parentsthe option of usinggovernment-funded school vouchers" while Version B says more simply, "giving parents government-funded school vouchers."

• Version A includes the phrase "public,private orreligiousschool" while version B says more simply "private school."

• Version A includes the phrase "of their choice," while Version B does not.

Without further experimentation, it is not possible to determine precisely which of these three variations induced the biggest differences in support for vouchers. The above experiment, however, does support the hypothesis that reminding respondents that voucher programs would include options and choices, and adding the fact that the choices of schools could include other public schools and religious schools, makes a difference in the acceptance of such programs by the public.

General Concept of Vouchers Tied to President-Elect George W. Bush
In the January 5-7 survey, Americans were also asked about George W. Bush's voucher program without any explanation of what the program entailed or how it would be specifically put into action:

Based on what you have read or heard, do you favor or oppose the school voucher program George W. Bush has proposed?

 

Favor	43%
Oppose	36%
No opinion	19%

This question included none of the specific descriptions of vouchers that were included in the questions reviewed above. The fact that it nevertheless elicits a 7% favor-over-opposition margin suggests that, everything else being equal, there is a baseline of some support for the general concept of vouchers when it is explicitly tied to President-elect George W. Bush.

Review of Additional Poll Questions on Vouchers Asked Over the Past Year
The table below lists additional ways in which survey researchers have asked about voucher/school choice programs over the past year. It is important to keep in mind that each survey produces its own context for the asking of these questions, and some of the variation in the responses can be due to the survey questions that are asked before the voucher questions as the survey progresses. In addition, between any surveys, there may be random variations in responses to even the same questions.

Still, the variation in responses to these questions is extraordinary, and this variation reinforces the conclusion that public receptivity to a voucher program in the coming months has the potential to range from highly supportive to highly opposed.

Date	Organization	Wording	For	Against	Margin
2000 Sep 27-Oct 1	CBS News/New York Times Poll	Please tell me if you agree or disagree with the following statement. Parents should get tax-funded vouchers they can use to help pay for tuition for their children to attend private or religious schools instead of public schools.	45	50	-5
2000 Sep 7-17	Washington Post/Kaiser/Harvard 2000 Election Values Survey	Do you favor or oppose providing parents with tax money in the form of school vouchers to help pay for their children to attend private or religious schools?	49	47	+2
2000 Aug 24-Sep 10	Pew Research Center/Princeton Survey Research Associates	I'd like your opinion of some programs and proposals being discussed in this country today. Please tell me if you strongly favor, favor, oppose, or strongly oppose each one. … Federal funding for vouchers to help low- and middle-income parents send their children to private and parochial school.	53	44	+9
2000 Aug 10-11	NBC News/Wall Street Journal Poll	Let me read you two positions on school vouchers. Between these positions, which do you tend to side with more? Position A: Government should give parents more educational choices by providing taxpayer-funded vouchers to help pay for private or religious schools. Position B: Government funding should be limited to children who attend public schools. (If position A or B, ask) How strongly do you side with this position -- totally, mainly, or just somewhat?	56	38	+18
2000 Jun 23-Jul 9	University of Maryland	Do you favor or oppose establishing a school voucher program that would allow parents to use tax funds to send their children to a private school?	50	45	+5
2000 May 11-22	Washington Post/Kaiser/Harvard 2000 Election Values Survey	(I'd like you to think about students who attend what some people call "failing schools." These are low-ranking, poor-quality public schools where students' academic performance is low and has not improved in the past three years. I'm going to read descriptions of two federal programs that have been proposed to deal with the problem of failing schools. For each, please tell me whether you favor or oppose it.) ... The program would provide parents of a child in a failing public school with a $1,500 federal voucher that they could use to send their child to another school. Parents could use the money to help pay the cost of a private school, or to send their child to another public school outside their district. Would you favor or oppose this program?	48	49	-1
2000 May 10-29	University of Connecticut/Heldrich Center at Rutgers	I am going to read you a list of education policies and practices that some suggest will improve public education. For each, please tell me if you favor such a policy or oppose such a policy. … Provide vouchers to help parents send their children to private school.	39	57	-18
2000 Apr 3-26	University of Connecticut	Please tell me whether you agree or disagree with each of the following statements. Parents should have the option of sending their children to religious schools instead of public schools using "vouchers" or "credits" provided by the federal government that would pay for some or all of the costs. ... Strongly agree, mildly agree, mildly disagree, strongly disagree?	64	34	+30
2000 Mar 9-10	Princeton Survey Research Associates/Newsweek	(I'm going to describe the positions of two candidates for president (in 2000) on some different issues. I'll call them Candidate A and Candidate B. After I describe their positions on each issue, tell me which candidate you would be more likely to vote for based only on this issue.) ... On the issue of education, Candidate A calls for reforming education by giving parents vouchers to help send their children to the school of their choice, including a private or church-run school. Candidate B says vouchers are the wrong kind of education reform and would be damaging to our public school system. Based only on the issue, would you be more likely to vote for Candidate A or Candidate B?	54	40	+14

Without further experimentation, it is impossible to pinpoint the explanation for the differences among these responses with precision.

Still, these results seem to suggest that the same types of variables reviewed above -- in connection with the Gallup questions -- impact respondent answers. First, when the words "choice" or "options" are emphasized to respondents, support for voucher/school choice programs goes up. Second, when "religious schools" are specifically mentioned as one of the options such programs would provide (as opposed to just "private schools"), support for vouchers builds. Finally, questions that specify the voucher program will pay for onlysomeof the costs of tuition also seem to receive increased support. Questions that do not contain any of these attributes are more inclined to receive responses that do not favor voucher programs.

The Voucher Issue Essentially up for Grabs
All in all, the existing survey research suggests that there is neither consistent support nor consistent opposition to voucher programs at this time. Public support for voucher programs is essentially up for grabs, and the way in which such programs are both defined and explained in the ongoing public debate in the months ahead will have a significant impact on public receptivity to them. The inchoate state of the voucher concept in the minds of the public makes the issue one that is extraordinarily responsive to the way in which it is developed, and the winner of the debate may well be the groups that arrive first and strongest with their interpretation of what voucher programs entail and their explanations of their benefits and costs.

Survey Methods

Results are based on telephone interviews with -- 1,018 -- national adults, aged 18+, conducted January 5-7, 2001. For results based on the total sample of national adults, one can say with 95% confidence that the margin of sampling error is +/- 3 percentage points.

In addition to sampling error, question wording and practical difficulties in conducting surveys can introduce error or bias into the findings of public opinion polls.