{"id":3220,"date":"2023-06-01T20:47:14","date_gmt":"2023-06-01T20:47:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/?p=3220"},"modified":"2023-06-01T21:23:31","modified_gmt":"2023-06-01T21:23:31","slug":"why-public-school-goers-support-choice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/?p=3220","title":{"rendered":"Why public school-goers support choice"},"content":{"rendered":"

This post originally appeared at https:\/\/www.badgerinstitute.org\/why-public-school-goers-support-choice\/<\/a><\/p>\n

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The idea of school choice is so popular in Wisconsin that it raises a question.<\/p>\n

And it is<\/em> popular. A new poll last month asked 700 likely voters, \u201cDo you generally support or oppose school choice?\u201d and 70% said \u201csupport.\u201d That\u2019s a landslide. Sure, the idea was big with Republicans, but 67% of independents favor choice. A majority of Democrats, 53%, did.<\/p>\n

Should the state funding that follows kids to private schools, now around $9,000, be closer to the $15,000-per-student average in public schools? Yes, said 57%. Should the state Supreme Court kill the program? No way, said 74%. Should the program expand? Yes, said 63%.<\/p>\n

Sure, the poll was commissioned by Wisconsin\u2019s choice-favoring chamber of commerce<\/a>, but polls repeatedly have shown broad support for parents\u2019 power to pick a school. The Marquette Law School Poll in May asked the same question with icier words about \u201cstate funding for vouchers\u201d at \u201creligious schools.\u201d It was 55% in favor. Among people with children at home, it was 65% yes.<\/p>\n

Yet in Wisconsin, only 6% of children attend a school using parental choice programs. Another 1.3% go to an independent public charter school.<\/p>\n

So those polled people who favor parental choice and want more of it aren\u2019t just angling to get their tuition covered, as critics so often claim. Most are using traditional public district schools. And, so, to the question: Why do they favor choice?<\/p>\n

The polls didn\u2019t ask, but maybe a crowd in a Wisconsin barn last month offers insight.<\/p>\n

The crowd, about 430 people, an organizer told me, packed the venue on the outskirts of Belgium. That\u2019s a lot of people in a rural area on a Wednesday night. There were free hot dogs, but the beer cost you cash. The event got advance billing on talk radio, but the draw was a lecture and PowerPoint from a UW-Oshkosh professor of English, Duke Pesta.<\/p>\n

Pesta spoke for 90 minutes on Wisconsin public school curriculum. The crowd, including the 100 or so without chairs, was rapt.<\/p>\n

Pesta\u2019s point was that public schools, including schools in Wisconsin, are offering books and lessons that parents find objectionable. There\u2019s the book<\/a> pitched at young children that teaches them their parents are unwitting racists and that their own \u201cwhiteness\u201d makes them guilty for \u201cstolen land, stolen riches.\u201d There were privilege-shaming episodes. There\u2019s the Department of Public Instruction seminar<\/a> last winter telling teachers that proper grammar is \u201ccurriculum violence.\u201d<\/p>\n

On and on went the illustrations of schools teaching not American history but, rather, telling children that their country still is defined by unending racism and that they are defined by their skin as either oppressor or oppressed.<\/p>\n

And that was before Pesta started in on the sex stuff.<\/p>\n

Notably, Pesta wasn\u2019t rabble-rousing but was laying out steps: Here are titles to look for, here are phrases to listen for. \u201cAsk your kids every day what they read,\u201d he advised.<\/p>\n

The crowd reaction wasn\u2019t rage but about what\u2019s next. \u201cDo you have links for some resources?\u201d asked someone in the Q&A. \u201cHow do we take this to the streets?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThat was the whole purpose,\u201d said Randy Kurth, who organized it. \u201cSo many people reached out and said, \u2018I don\u2019t know what to do.\u2019 I was one of those people.\u201d<\/p>\n

Now the Ozaukee County man is one of those people who attend school board meetings. He and a friend were commiserating about what news reports<\/a> elsewhere<\/a> were turning up<\/a>. They started reading board agendas, learning board procedure, attending, volunteering, networking.<\/p>\n

He believes in the good intentions of teachers, he said, and he reckons that the crowd in the barn supports public schools. This makes sense: You don\u2019t spend 90 minutes taking notes on how to recognize critical race theory if you think your schools are already a lost cause.<\/p>\n

But he also expects most support school choice, too. Parental discretion is the bottom line, said Kurth: \u201cParents making that decision about what\u2019s being brought into schools.\u201d What moves people is the threat of freedom\u2019s loss, \u201cthat they\u2019re going to dictate what our children are taught and we will have no say.\u201d<\/p>\n

One response is to go to the board meetings. And when you lose? You give up and sigh ruefully as your kid is made to confess her \u201cwhite privilege\u201d? No. You act.<\/p>\n

In the WMC poll, one of the most lopsided questions was this: \u201cParents, not the state, are responsible for determining the type of education that their children need.\u201d Seventy-four percent \u2014 three out of four \u2014 agreed.<\/p>\n

When schools threaten to teach things that parents think are poison, parents need the option to act \u2014 to engage, to call the school board to account, to leave for a better school. Parents understand this continuum. They say it polls, they say it in crowded lecture venues.<\/p>\n

And Wisconsin is better for their urgency.<\/p>\n

Patrick McIlheran is the Director of Policy at the Badger Institute. Permission to reprint is granted as long as the author and Badger Institute are properly cited<\/em>.<\/p>\n

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The post Why public school-goers support choice<\/a> appeared first on Badger Institute<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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