HARRISBURG PA – About two of three, or 67 percent, of recently polled Pennsylvanians oppose giving public money – in what were described as “taxpayer-funded tuition vouchers” – to parents so they can send their children to schools other than those in the school district where they live, the Pennsylvania School Boards Association (PSBA) claimed Wednesday (Jan. 26, 2011).
Making tuition vouchers available is among the campaign promises made by newly inaugurated Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett. A voucher system is being fought by PSBA and many of its members, which include the Pottsgrove School District Board of School Directors.
In the poll of 805 state residents, designed by Terry Madonna Opinion Research, “only a small minority (13.7 percent)” of those polled “strongly favor taxpayer-funded tuition vouchers,” PSBA said. Most Pennsylvanians age 55 or older, oppose vouchers, and 51 percent “strongly oppose them,” it added.
More than 70 percent of individuals surveyed under the age of 34, strongly or somewhat oppose tuition vouchers, more so than any other respondent age group, according to PSBA. Two-thirds of those polled also oppose state law that requires school districts to pay the tuition of students attending charter and cyber-charter schools, it said.
PSBA is a non-profit statewide association of public school founded in 1895.
Related (to education tuition vouchers):
Right! Might as well ask the foxes if they would like the farmers to put thicker doors and stronger locks on the chicken coops.
Don’t expect the PSBA, the Pottsgrove School District or the Teachers Union to agree with Public School Tuition Vouchers. The idea is completely diametrically opposed to their goals and interests.
And please, don’t be reporting on the results of a survey without co-publishing the actual & complete survey form or questions. Not just giving artfully selective quotes from the questions.
Also, please when reporting the basis of the survey, don’t simply report the number of people who took the survey (in this case 805). Also include the number of people woh are in the affected base of the survey’s topic. In this case that would either be the population of Pennsylvania (12.7 million people according to Wikipedia), or maybe the number of people in families with children of school age (I don’t know what that number is). However, 805 / 12,700,000 = 0.0063 percent, a quite laughable sample on which to base a news story.
I myself favor school vouchers, even if they are a “partial voucher”. That is, the voucher only covers a part of the non-public school tuition. One example of a “partial voucher” would be to allow families of school age children to apply the exact amount of their school property taxes to the non-public school tuition of their children. In other words they write their property tax check to THEIR school instead of the Public School District. Yeah, I’ll hold my breath waiting for the PSBA, the Pottsgrove School District or the Teachers’ Union to agree to that!!!!
Wolfgang, no news story is as complete as it might be and, as you point out at length, so it is with this one. It is written primarily from a press release; it links to the release in the first paragraph, and qualifies the statements made by the PSBA not as fact but as having been “claimed,” “said,” or “announced.” If reader page views of this story since its publication Saturday are any indication, however, it generated a great deal of interest among The Post’s audience and it yielded substantial comment from you. As an editor I am therefore happy, couldn’t ask for much more, and feel the effort expended was worthwhile.
Besides, I would have bet dollars to doughnuts that you would provide an alternative view. I would have won, too.
For the record, I will note that – thanks to The Pennsylvania Independent in Harrisburg – we also covered the alternative first … back in December (2010) here:
http://sanatogapost.com/2010/12/14/senate-education-chair-preps-for-voucher-choice-battle/
In Lower Pottsgrove (PA) Township, by the way, according to 2009 figures from the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey, there are a total of 4,494 household units, of which 1,846 (or 41 percent) are occupied by families with children age 18 or younger. It’s not the state sample you might have hoped for, but it’s worth noting.