Poll says Tennesseans favor choice on schools

PDF: School Choice Survey

NASHVILLE — Advocates of charter schools and education vouchers on Wednesday released a survey they say shows Tennesseans want alternatives to traditional public education although they don’t know a great deal about those choices.

The poll of 1,200 likely voters, conducted by Strategic Vision for several conservative groups, found just 29 percent who called Tennessee public schools “excellent” or “good.” Fifty-two percent rated the state’s public school system as “poor” or “fair” while 19 percent were undecided.

The survey showed:

* 37 percent of respondents said they would choose private school for their child;

* 28 percent said they would opt for a charter school;

* 8 percent chose home schooling;

* 15 percent chose public school.

The Tennessee Center for Policy Research and the Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice released the poll, which had a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percent.

The survey “shows that Tennesseans do want choice in education,” said Drew Johnson, president of the Tennessee Center for Policy Research, described as a free-market think tank.

Tennessee Education Association’s chief lobbyist, Jerry Winters, questioned the poll’s accuracy and challenged its sponsors.

“The Tennessee Center for Policy Research is generally known as being an arch-conservative, rather right-wing, leaning group and certainly the Friedman Foundation meets the same description,” said Mr. Winters, whose group represents many teachers. “I guess without seeing the results, I would certainly from the outset (question) the objectivity and the fairness of the results.”

The survey was released as the Senate Education Committee debated and ultimately delayed acting on a bill to extend Tennessee’s six-year-old experiment in charter schools beyond a July 1 expiration date. The bill snagged over a proposal to expand the types of students eligible to attend one of the state’s 12 existing charter schools.

Several Democrats, including Sen. Andy Berke, D-Chattanooga, and Mr. Winters, raised concerns about the bill.

It proposes allowing charter schools to fill some slots with any student who is on the federal free or reduced-price lunch program. Currently, charter schools are restricted to drawing their students from schools or students considered to be failing.

“You’re opening it up to a huge number of students,” Mr. Winters told the panel.

Matt Throckmorton of the Tennessee Charter School Association said the change would not expand the total students allowed to attend the schools. It would let charter schools deal with a current situation where they are having to refuse some students at the last minute because of new information on tests. About 51 slots would be affected, he said.

Sen. Berke questioned whether the bill would “change essentially the types of students going into charter schools because they’re all going to be filled from this category rather than the failing schools and failing students category.”

The bill was delayed. Sen. Berke later said he favors a plan to extend permanently the life of charter schools, currently limited to 50 statewide. He said he also favors the “reasonable expansion of eligibility.” The problem is the “the mechanism that they’re using to fill that,” he said.

Tennessee has limited charter school availability with only 12 operating and a maximum cap of 50 schools. Charter schools are publicly financed schools that operate without many of the restrictions and regulations faced by traditional public schools.