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Survey shows Kentucky parents support school choice

(BOWLING GREEN, Ky.) – A newly released school-choice survey commissioned by the Bluegrass Institute indicates that the more Kentuckians find out about school choice, the more they favor it as an option for parents across the commonwealth.

In a telephone survey yielding 493 completed surveys, 79 percent of respondents favored allowing parents to have more choices in determining where children attend school.

“With the release of this survey, the ‘school-choice’ cat is now out of the bag,” said Chris Derry, president of the Bluegrass Institute. “When informed of alternatives, Kentucky parents believe educational choices now available to parents in many other states would improve the quality of education in our schools here.”

The survey was conducted between March 11 and April 1 by a team of researchers working with Dr. Larry M. Caillouet, associate professor of communication at Western Kentucky University. It left little doubt that Kentuckians do not hold the same rosy assessment of our state’s education system constantly offered by politicians and education policy makers.

The survey clearly shows that a solid majority of parents do not believe that Kentucky’s public schools are showing significant improvement. Only 34 percent of respondents said that the state’s public schools have improved during the past few years. A majority of respondents said that the quality of Kentucky’s public schools grew worse or remained the same.

Most respondents said they were not familiar with details about the many forms of school choice such as charter schools, vouchers, scholarship tax credits and open-enrollment agreements. However, after a short explanation of each type of school-choice policy, respondents expressed overwhelming support for all these approaches.

For example, 65 percent of respondents said that they were not familiar with education vouchers. Yet, after receiving an explanation of vouchers that stated that vouchers are a type of school choice “in which a state issues certificates that allow parents to select a school of their choice for their child to attend,” 64 percent of respondents said they believed vouchers would help improve the quality of education in Kentucky.

– For more information on the survey or an interview, contact Jim Waters, director of policy and communications for the Bluegrass Institute. He can be reached at (270) 782-2140 or jwaters@bipps.org.

   The Bluegrass Institute is an independent research and educational institution offering free-market solutions to Kentucky's most pressing problems.

Permission to reprint Perspective commentaries, in whole or in part, is hereby granted, provided the author and his affiliations are cited. Authors are available for interviews by contacting the institute.

Bluegrass Institute for Public Policy Solutions
400 East Main Avenue, Bowling Green, KY 42101

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