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Voters not for vouchers

By Ana Campoy

Voters who rejected the school voucher initiative said they had enjoyed a good or excellent experience with the local public schools, according to an exit poll by UC Berkeley students.

All but two of the students conducted their polling in San Francisco, and all of the students polled only those voters who had school-age children.

The students polled 84 voters and of those, only 20 or 24 percent, voted in favor of the ballot initiative. This tracked the statewide vote. With 69 percent of the precincts counted, 70 percent voted no and 30 percent voted in favor of the initiative.

The poll was taken by students in a Freshman Seminar on the California initiative process.

Voters in Chinatown told the student pollsters that they had strong feelings about the initiative and they had not relied on the media for their information.
"They said their decision was based on their own personal beliefs," said Jordan Bornstein.

While voters in Chinatown overwhelmingly rejected the initiative, it garnered its strongest support from Nob Hill voters whose children attend private schools.

The poll reflected what analysts said was one of the main reasons that unlike the bilingual education initiative last year, Proposition 38, financed by venture capitalist Tim Draper, failed to take off.

Voters want to see improvement in the public schools, but are generally happy with their local schools and don't associate vouchers with reform. The vast majority, 70 percent, give their kids' schools As and Bs, according to the 2000 Phi Delta Kappa/Gallup Poll of the Public's Attitude Toward Public Schools.

In addition, vouchers have a bad reputation. Less than four percent of Americans see vouchers as an effective way to improve public schools, according to this year's Gallup polls. And, more than 50 percent of Californians think that passage of the voucher initiative will not help the public school system or the students with the lowest test scores, according to the findings of the Public Policy Institute of California, a non-profit organization dedicated to the research of political and social issues in the state.

Additionally, with the economy booming, California residents have seen big changes in the education system in recent years, including more funding, improved bonuses for students and teachers, increased accountability through tests and smaller class sizes. According to the student poll, only 30 percent of those with kids in public schools think they are getting worse.
"(Prop. 38) is a hard sell in the current state of California because if we are seeing improvements. Why are we going decentralize and risk whatever gains we have been making?" asked Huerta.

According to the student poll, it was mainly parents of private school children who disapprove of the public system, and 52 percent of them voted for Prop. 38.

The other group that could have supported it according to the Yes on Prop. 38 campaign was inner-city Latinos and blacks. But, the majority of parents with kids in inner-city schools don't vote, said Pam Riley, a political scientist from the Pacific Research Institute.

Although the Yes on Prop.38 campaign chose to make access to the voucher system universal, it failed to ally with organizations such as the Catholic Conference, which could have helped to build support among middle to high income voters which are more likely to vote, added Riley. The Catholic Church has 718 schools, which serve 254,000 of the state's students.

Luis Huerta, researcher of the Policy Analysis of California Education, a joint effort between UC Berkeley and Stanford University, added that the campaign might have received some valuable advice from Catholic educators. "The Catholic Conference would have flat out just told them that $4000 was not enough to run a school," he said.

To top it all, Proposition 38 has a price tag. According to the Policy Analysis of California Education, it would cost California residents at least $2.6 billion dollars, a moderate figure when compared to the $3.3 billion estimate of the Legislative Analyst's Office. And so far, there is no evidence that it would work since none of the other existing vouchers programs in the country are based on the universal access that Prop. 38 promises.

"It is a more drastic measure than most people are comfortable with", said Kim Rueben, education research fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California.