SoonerSurvey is out with its latest measure of public sentiment.
It found that 70% of Oklahoma voters support school choice. This increases to 79% among registered Republicans and 78% among women with a child in the home.
- Driving the support of school choice is the fundamental belief that competition improves schools. More than two-thirds of voters say that competition improves schools (67%) while just one in five (21%) do not think competition helps.
- 75% want to expand the Lindsey Nicole Henry Scholarship program for children with disabilities.
- By a 17-point margin (54% Favor / 37% oppose) voters support Education Saving Accounts that would allow parents to use a portion the yearly state funding used for their child and use those tax dollars for “private or parochial school tuition” and other education expenses.
The Oklahoma public school system is the Braniff Airlines of education: bad service, bloated administration and schedules designed to suit the employees. Private schools may vary – some good, some bad – but at least the bad ones go out of business. Collectively, however, private schools act as the equivalent of Southwest.
“School Choice”, huh? I’ve got a few possible choices for us, as conservative Republicans, to consider:
1. How about we “CHOOSE” to get our schools off of all these mind-numbing, government mandated regulations so they can do their jobs? Sometimes it seems like schools are expected to do everything other than teach.
2. How about we “CHOOSE” to enact real solutions to problems such as incorrigible kids, kids who repeatedly show willful defiance in the classroom, and kids who refuse to submit to school authority? You DO REALIZE, don’t you, that 85 – 90% of the trouble Oklahoma City school district has is nothing other than this? When we refuse to paddle, play pretend games about high suspension rates reflecting racism, and fail to expell students who don’t belong there, all we’re doing is making it so teachers can’t teach and other students can’t learn. Blaming the school or the teacher isn’t going to fix that.
3. How about we “CHOOSE” to stop letting our public schools be one, giant athletics program and instead mandate that all sports-related activities such as games and practices be strictly after school hours?
4. How about we “CHOOSE” to take the onus for failing off the teachers and the schools and put it squarely on the students where it belongs? Yes, that will mean that some kids won’t stay in school and won’t graduate—once the grow up and decide to get serious about life, they can go to night school and get a GED. Meanwhile, kids who are there for an education shouldn’t HAVE to be yanked out of their schools and sent off to subsidized private schools—we ought to be making substantive changes in what we, the taxpayers, already have.
That is all fine and good, but that has nothing to do with giving parents more choice to educate their children…I’m all for reforming our current education system, but I am more for giving parents more freedom