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Most Americans know very little about vouchers, charter schools or for-profit schools, and most have a limited grasp of the essentials of the expert debate. Experts and advocates may hold carefully thought-out positions, but the public has barely begun to learn how these proposals might work. Even parents in areas with school choice policies in place are surprisingly unaware of the pros and cons of this debate. |
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Blank looks and a deafening silence greeted our moderator when he asked participants in the first of our five focus groups if they had heard the term "school vouchers." It was clear that virtually none could venture anything more than a wild guess as to what vouchers meant. After encouragement, one woman was willing to try: were school vouchers store credits students could use to buy uniforms, she wondered. We quickly learned that we could not begin a worthwhile conversation without first handing out a sheet that briefly summarized the key elements of school vouchers. Even in Milwaukee, where school vouchers have been in place for nearly a decade, the low level of familiarity required the moderators to bring out the cheat sheets. There can be no more striking contrast of the state of the public's thinking about alternatives to the traditional public school system than to compare it with public attitudes toward welfare reform. In 1996, when Public Agenda conducted a study on welfare reform, Americans were far more likely to have spent time thinking about this issue. Bringing up the issue in focus groups opened the floodgates, and people leaped into the discussion. With welfare, people also had strongly held notions about what should be done: work and time limits coupled with education and child care. With vouchers and charters, little is certain and virtually everything negotiable.
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