School & District Management

Choice-Group Poll: Mothers Back Vouchers, Tax-Credit Scholarships

By Michele Molnar — May 08, 2013 1 min read
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A new poll released today by a pro-school-choice foundation finds that 66 percent of mothers with school-age children support educational vouchers, and 69 percent support tax-credit scholarships to choose their children’s schools.

The Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice, which favors school choice, hired Braun Research, Inc. to conduct the study of 1,000 adults between April 1 and April 8, with a nationally representative sample of 1,000 adults.

Mothers surveyed gave low marks to the current course of K-12 education: 61 percent said it has “gotten off on the wrong track,” and 79 percent rated the federal government’s involvement in education as “fair” or “poor.”

Public schools’ grades are slipping, too, in the view of moms surveyed: 43 percent gave their public schools an “A” or “B"—a drop of 19 points since 2012, when 62 percent gave their public schools those grades.

Mothers with school-age children also voiced more confidence in private school settings than in traditional public schools, the researchers found.

As of the 2012-13 school year, about 255,000 students used voucher and tax-credit scholarship programs in 22 states and Washington, D.C. As of the fall of 2011, 54.7 million students were enrolled in public schools.

The survey’s questionnaire, full results, and methodology are available here.

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A version of this news article first appeared in the K-12 Parents and the Public blog.