School Choice or Best Systems_ What Improves Education_ - Margaret C. Wang [48]
The 2002-03 National Household Education Survey, conducted by the National Center for Education Statistics, found that only 57 percent of parents with children attending traditional public schools were “very satisfied.”21 In contrast, 68 percent with children attending public schools of choice, 75 percent with children attending secular private schools, and 78 percent with children attending religious private schools were “very satisfied.”
Terry Moe summarized the results of public opinion surveys22 and concluded that the public believes the public school system
• is outperformed by schools in the private sector;
• is inequitable, particularly on class grounds;
• adopts undesirable means of promoting diversity;
• is too intolerant of religion;
• gives parents too little influence;
• has schools that are too large; and
• should make better use of market-like mechanisms.
Sizable numbers of “customers” of public schools are clearly unhappy with the current public schools. Unfortunately, most parents have little choice but to allow others to determine what schools their children attend, even when it is well-known that the local public schools are failing academically.
Satisfaction with Charter Schools
The public is much more pleased with charter schools than it is with traditional public schools, although many do not understand them. A 2006 survey by the Glover Park Group23 found that only 57 percent knew the meaning of charter schools. However, after hearing them defined (“independent public schools that are free to be more innovative and are held accountable for improved student achievement”), 74 percent favored expanding them, and 62 percent favored lifting state legislative caps that curtail their growth. Common elements of charter schools were even more strongly favored by voters:
• 85 percent favored giving parents more options for where to send their child to school;
• 83 percent favored giving schools more flexibility to design curriculum; and
• 90 percent favored holding students, teachers, and parents accountable for improving student achievement.
Of parents with school-aged children, 55 percent said they would be interested in enrolling their child in a charter school.
Homeschooling as an Indicator of Opinion
In 2003 parents and others educated at home some 1.1 million youngsters who would otherwise be age-eligible for K-12 schools.24 Comparable to the size of the charter school sector, homeschooling had grown to 2.2 from 1.7 percent of the K-12 age-eligible population in 1999.
Many homeschoolers belong to the religious right, but others are on the countercultural left or are simply unhappy with the poor standards, the violence, and dominant peer culture of traditional schools. Various surveys of homeschooled students suggest that they outscore from 75 to more than 90 percent of traditional public school students and that they suffer no more college or adult psychological adjustment problems than do traditional school students.25
For five years I served as a judge for an independent charitable organization that awarded strictly merit-based scholarships to high school students, mostly applying to Ivy League and other elite universities, who had perfect or near perfect scores on the Scholastic Aptitude Test for college admission, had passed advanced college level courses while in high school, and had shown other evidence of advanced studies such as winning state and national academic competitions. At a celebration dinner for Midwestern students, I sat with seven recipients. At the table were two homeschooled students, one of whom was a young woman who was representing the United States in the International Mathematics Olympiad, which pits against each other the very best secondary school mathematicians in each of several dozen countries. This