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The Mackinac Center for Public Policy worked on this survey project from November 2005 through September 2006. We provided assistance to the survey researcher, Adam B. Schaeffer, who was then a National Research Initiative Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C., by collaborating on the survey instrument, offering relevant and limited information from our database, handling technical details of inviting and following up with participants, and editing and publishing this document.
The Mackinac Center for Public Policy worked on this survey project from November 2005 through September 2006. We provided assistance to the survey researcher, Adam B. Schaeffer, who was then a National Research Initiative Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C., by collaborating on the survey instrument, offering relevant and limited information from our database, handling technical details of inviting and following up with participants, and editing and publishing this document.
We were interested in the survey project because of our long involvement in school choice issues. We have published various studies and reports on parental choice in Michigan public education, including cross-district choice, dual enrollment and charter public schools. We have also worked extensively to educate citizens on programs that would provide more opportunities for Michigan parents to choose independent schools: We have published work on vouchers and proposed a unique “universal tuition tax credit” program. Any school choice policies in Michigan that include independent schools would require an amendment to the state constitution, and such policies have thus far remained proposals. Nevertheless, many of our findings and recommendations can be adapted for use in other states.
Over the years, we have been privileged to assist many institutes and grass-roots groups by training hundreds of public policy institute executives from North America and around the world. Our twice-yearly training conferences have had waiting lists every time they have been held since 1998.
We at the Mackinac Center hope that publishing the results of this survey will stimulate discussion among our friends and associates about parental choice policy innovations.
— Ryan S. Olson
Mackinac Center Director of Education Policy
The school choice movement is complex because of the variety of educational choice policies and the plethora of organizations working on such policies. The number of existing and proposed policies in the "school choice" vein includes cross-district school selection, dual enrollment programs, various kinds of targeted vouchers, home schooling, charter public schools, various kinds of targeted education tax credits, residential choice and still more expansive programs like universal vouchers and universal education tax credits. Any number of these policies are supported by different organizations involved in the school choice movement, and those organizations differ in terms of their scope (national, multistate or single-state), primary activities (research, grass-roots organizing), budgets, legal and political environments, current influence and so on.
In view of these factors, where exactly do organizations in the school choice movement stand on vital school choice issues? Although the Op-Eds and policy papers from major school choice organizations can be canvassed to glean a sense of the movement’s views as a whole, there are hundreds of such organizations across the country, and many institutional policy preferences do not make it into print. Until now, a survey attempting to develop a snapshot of the school choice movement as seen by those participating in the movement has not been completed.
This publication records the results of a survey undertaken by Adam B. Schaeffer in conjunction with the Mackinac Center for Public Policy. The survey, conducted over four weeks in April and May 2006, covered past and present support for, or opposition to, cross-district choice, vouchers, charter schools, education tax credits, home schooling and total separation of state government and schools. Participants were asked to estimate the influence of their own and other organizations, such as teachers unions, on the content and success of school choice legislation. They were asked to estimate the frequency with which they use various arguments to advance school choice ideas and programs. Vouchers and education tax credits were assessed in terms of their legal viability, popularity and chances for passing state legislatures. Participants were prompted to quantify their organizations’ support for various degrees of private-school choice. Other aspects of voucher and tax credit policy design, such as commonly proposed regulations for participating private schools, were addressed as well. Finally, respondents were asked to describe the biggest obstacles to, and opportunities for, expanding school choice.
The questions were wide-ranging, and the answers offer an
enlightening glimpse into professional opinion and organizational preferences.
Nevertheless, this survey is hardly the "final word" on the school choice
movement. In light of that, we are releasing all of the survey data that does
not compromise anonymity, and we heartily welcome and encourage feedback.
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The survey can best be viewed by clicking the PDF link at the top or bottom of this page.
The survey was conducted through Survey Monkey, a Web-based survey instrument. Prior to beginning the survey, two preliminary e-mails were sent in order to confirm that the most appropriate person within the organization had been contacted and to apprise respondents of the purpose of the survey. As many as eight follow-up e-mails were sent to organizations that had not responded over a period of one month, from April 25, 2006, to May 26, 2006.[1]
The sample for this survey was compiled from the databases of the American Enterprise Institute, the Heritage Foundation, the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, the State Policy Network, All Children Matter and the State Policy Network 2005 annual conference.[2] Although most of the groups contacted were known by the author and the Mackinac Center to be directly involved in school choice or general education reform, an effort was also made to include groups that were planning to become involved or whose primary purpose is a policy area like tax reform, which is directly affected by school choice policy.
The sample of 473 organizations contained groups from every part of the political and ideological spectrum.[3] A substantial portion of the respondents were self-identified "free-market" organizations. Most major state and national free-market think tanks, most major state and national school choice issue organizations, and most major state and national fiscal, religious and family issue organizations were contacted. The total survey response rate was just under 50 percent (233 organizations), with 37 percent completing question 75. Additional "dropoff " occurred thereafter, with 35 percent (167 organizations) answering through the end of the demographic section.
As can be seen in the demographic questions at the end of the questionnaire,[4] the organizations that responded to this survey reflect some of the diversity of the school choice movement, and the survey provides a wide-ranging look at organizational and professional opinion. As is common with this kind of research instrument, the survey collected the opinions of only a sample of all state and national organizations involved in the movement. Thus, as with most surveys, response bias poses a threat to the validity of the results. Respondent diversity and the large percentage of state organizations responding are encouraging in this regard, but the only way to dispel all possibility of response bias is to succeed in surveying the vast majority of organizations involved in school choice. A similar survey may thus be attempted in the future.
The "filled-in" survey is reported below in full. A few minor errors that appeared in the original survey have been corrected for this publication; those small errors have been flagged for the reader in the footnotes. The formatting of the Web survey’s text, including underlined, bold, italicized and Roman text faces, has also been reproduced. The questions and prompts are presented in exactly the same order as they appeared in the Web survey. They have been renumbered, however, to facilitate clearer presentation and easier reference. A version of the completed survey in its entirely original form is available at https://www.mackinac.org/archives/2006/schoolchoicesurvey2006.pdf.
1 Note that significant educational policy events occurred before this period, including expansion of school choice programs involving private school options in Arizona (March 28, 2006), Wisconsin (March 10, 2006) and Ohio (March 30, 2006). These events may have affected respondents’ answers. Note, however, that participants were asked about professional opinion and their organizations’ positions on long-standing policy issues that are unlikely to be drastically affected by nearly synchronous events. See Robert D. Putnam, et al., "Attitude Stability among Italian Elites," American Journal of Political Science, Vol. 23, No. 3 (Aug. 1979), 463-494.
2 The SPN conference focused on tax reform and primary and secondary education reform. Contact information for conference attendees was obtained through SPN’s conference records.
3 The standard margin of error for a sample of this size is six percentage points. However, this survey is unusual in many ways. First, the respondents are not drawn as a probability sample from a larger population. The survey attempted to canvass the opinions of all organizations relevant to the school choice movement. There is no way to determine, therefore, a margin of error. The universe of organizations from which this sample is drawn is only about double that of the number of respondents, however, and a full census is within the range of possibility with a follow-up survey to address concerns regarding response bias. Second, this is a survey of organizational and professional opinion concerning policy issues, and we should therefore expect more stability and consistency in these responses than among the general public. We can therefore be more confident in the responses of the organizations that did participate (see footnote No. 1 above).
4 See the questions beginning on Page 16.
