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Academic Performance Index (API) rankings, Immediate Intervention for Underperforming Schools Programs (IIUSP), bonuses for teachers, failing schools, grades for schools, teacher shortages--for anyone reading newspapers in California during the past several years, these acronyms and phrases are disturbingly familiar. As California’s public schools appear to be deteriorating, and as the public’s confidence in public schools drop, political leaders are among the first to propose solutions to the problems. School reform movements abound, ranging from site-based management to bussing and school choice. It is this last alternative, school choice, that ignites an ideological debate.

School choice, also known as a voucher system, is simply what it sounds like--it gives parents a choice about which school their children attend. Reformers such as Terry Moe and John E. Chubb (1990) propose a market-model for education in which the government would give parents state money or vouchers to “spend” at any school of their choice, public or private. This type of system would drastically change the way in which the American public is educated, and an educated citizenry is vital to the functioning of a democracy. In California, two attempts have been made to pass an initiative creating a voucher system, once in 1993 and again in 2000. Both attempts failed in spite of television advertisements, endorsements, monetary backing, and well-run campaigns.

The role of ideology in support of vouchers is key. Initiative campaigns in California, Colorado, Washington State, and Michigan have failed (Moe 2001). The few successful public voucher programs in existence were created through normal political channels--the democratically elected legislature. Here, in the actions of ideological political elites (Converse 1964), is where vouchers will thrive or fail (Moe 2001). Since the actions of political elites and the policies they create are tied to public opinion, the study of who supports vouchers is important for both supporters and opponents of the movement (Glynn et. al. 1999; Moe 2001; Page and Shapiro 1993).

Public opinion surveys often list education as one of the public’s main concerns (Glynn et. al. 1999). There is a general perception that public schools need to be fixed (Moe and Chubb 1990; Smith and Meier 1995). Vouchers propose to do just that. It is here that the ideological battle lines are drawn. On one side are liberals, those who cherish the equality of opportunity embodied by the public school system. Vouchers would allow students to exit the public schools and enter private, mostly religious, schools that are free to pick and choose who can enroll and what is taught, thus weakening those social and democratic ideals associated with the public schools.

On the other side are conservatives, those who cherish the parent’s right to provide their child with the best education possible. Many parents already send their children to private schools, paying tuition, while their tax dollars support public schools. Those parents, conservatives argue, should be able to use their own tax dollars to send their students to those private schools, thereby circumventing the poor, government controlled schools.

Since California is an initiative state, this debate could effect the education of every schoolchild, and so it is critical for public opinion scholars to discover who supports vouchers. I hypothesize that a citizen’s ideology will influence his/her position on vouchers. Specifically, the more conservative a person is, the more likely he or she is to favor vouchers, and the more liberal a person, the less likely they are to favor vouchers.

One way to define a political ideology is as a mass belief system (Converse 1964). This system helps people organize their ideas, values, and beliefs in a coherent way. People then use this ideology to help them make decisions about various political and policy issues. Although not necessarily specific, an ideology is usually tied to domestic rather than foreign affairs (VanDyke 1995). Since vouchers are political, especially in initiative states such as California, and they are domestic, related to public schools, they are likely to be influenced by ideology.

Conventionally in the United States, ideology is shown on a spectrum from left/liberal to right/conservative. In general, people towards the left end of the spectrum value equality—people should have freedom of expression and no one is better suited to rule than any other person. Those at the opposite end, the right, are seen as not valuing equality--all people have natural talents and abilities and should be able to use these accordingly (Hoover 1994). Although this is generally adequate, Kenneth R. Hoover adds another dimension, freedom and authority (Hoover 1994). This dimension allows a person to examine the relationship between different types of liberals and conservatives. For example, Vernon Van Dyke (1995) identifies in the United States, five different types of conservatives: conservative conservatives, economic conservatives, social conservatives, progressive conservatives and neoconservatives. Although these many labels are informative, the basic definitions of liberal and conservative used in the United States political system are sufficient. In general a liberal favors creating equality of opportunity through government action and would like to help those in society who need it most. They see government as part of the solution to the ills of society and believe government should enhance the worth of liberty and promote a fair equality of opportunity for all people (Van Dyke 1995). Conservatives, in general, favor limiting the role of government and giving people the opportunities to make their own choices. Liberals often see government as part of the problem, although most recognize the necessity of government safety nets such as U.S. Social Security and some sort of welfare system. Often, conservatives are highly focused on the family and feel parents should be given greater control over their children in all aspects of life (Van Dyke 1995). From this brief overview, it appears both liberals and conservatives should favor vouchers--liberals because they would allow children to “escape” from bad schools, conservatives because they would allow parents to have more control over their children’s education.

Liberals should favor vouchers because they would allow children to “escape” failing public schools. Since liberals value creating equality of opportunity through government action, they should logically favor any government help for those languishing in poor schools. Often the people trapped in the lowest performing schools are poor and minority (see Moe 1995, 2001; Schneider et al. 2000). These are the people traditionally identified as those liberals would like to help. Providing these parents with the opportunity to send their children to better schools is consistent with liberal ideology.

Conservative ideology also supports vouchers. Many conservatives focus on the strength of the family and are especially concerned with providing parents the opportunity to regulate their child’s life. One important aspect of that child’s life is education and it is in precisely that area that parents have the least control. Vouchers would provide these parents with the opportunity to better control their child’s education by allowing them to select the school which best matches their wants and needs.

Unfortunately, both ideologies also conflict with the concept of vouchers. In the case of liberals, although rescuing underprivileged students from failing schools is an admirable goal, sending government money to religious schools is almost unthinkable. A true market-model voucher system would invariably funnel money into religious schools simply because 85 percent of private schools are religious (Kemerer 1995). On the other hand, conservatives fear the government regulations that would follow the public money into private schools. Although both of these scenarios could be considered “worst case,” both are entirely plausible.

Some scholars, such as Philip Converse (1964), argue that very few members of the American public actually have, use, and can articulate a specific left/right ideology. Those citizens that do use a mass belief system are generally well educated. Converse and others propose the idea of “issue publics” (Converse 1964). Certain segments of the population have an intense interest in certain policies and so become the “informed” public for that issue. Converse would argue that since most people do not have an ideology and actually make policy decisions almost randomly, any attempt to use ideology to explain political phenomena is essentially an exercise in futility. However, other scholars have disagreed. Benjamin Page and Robert Y. Shapiro (1993) marshal evidence which proves the public does not simply make random decisions; they do in fact make rational, reasonable decisions based on the information available to them. It is this view of the public, that they are rational and reasonable, that both proponents and opponents of vouchers hold (Kemerer 1995; Moe 2001; Schneider et. al. 2000).

The most common conception of school choice is the one proposed by Terry Moe and John E. Chubb in Politics, Markets and America’s Schools (1990). Through a study of over 400 American high schools and almost 20,000 students, teachers, and principals, they identified the institutions governing public schools as the root of poor public school performance. They advocate dismantling the current top-down system and replacing it with a market-model in which parents and students would select the schools that best fit their needs. This would create competition among schools and thus improve all of the schools. Moe and Chubb famously claim in this work that “choice is a panacea” (217 emphasis in original) and will solve all of the problems with schools. However, their market-model of competitive schooling has never been actually used; choice systems in the United States are limited in scope. Most involve choice within the public school district--students can attend magnet or charter schools; they can enroll in any school within the district; they can apply for inter-district transfers. One other popular option is the creation of private voucher systems. It is on those systems that most of the research has focused.

Past research on school choice deals with ideology either tangentially or not at all. Most of the research focuses on the success or failure of voucher systems themselves (i.e. Carnoy 2001; Moe 1995). However, the studies almost always include some demographic information, including income and race, as well as the educational level of the parents who exercise the choice options available to them. Research has linked a person’s educational level to the development of an ideology. Scholars have found a strong correlation between a person’s educational level and their development and use of an ideology (Converse 1964). Although there is no particular direction, left or right, attached to the ideology associated with higher educational levels, in general the more education a person has the more likely they are to have and use a specific, coherent belief system.

Most voucher programs are private--they are funded by private sources, not public funds (Moe 1995; Carnoy 2001; Greene 2000). One exception is in Milwaukee where a limited public voucher system exists alongside a private system. In “Private Vouchers in Milwaukee: the PAVE Program,” Janet R. Beales and Maureen Wahl (Moe 1995) examine, among other things, the characteristics of parents who tend to participate in these choice programs. Both voucher programs were designed to aid only low-income students; the family had to live below 175 percent of the poverty level. In order to study the programs, Beales and Wahl used data obtained from surveys of parents who participated in the programs, as well as data provided by the Milwaukee Public School System. Their analysis showed the parents who took advantage of the Partners Advancing Values in Education (PAVE) system tended to be more educated than the average low-income parent—46 percent of PAVE participants indicated they had some college while only 26% of those with low-income status in public schools indicated the same educational attainment. Choice parents were also more likely to have higher educational expectations for their children than non-choice parents. The study effectively provided detailed evidence about the relationship of parental characteristics to student success. Not surprisingly they found that the more involved and concerned the parent, the more the student improved. Due to a lack of data about ideology--not even political party membership was mentioned--no supported generalizations can be made in terms of specific ideological trends. However, one could speculate that ideology may have played a role in the parent’s decision to pursue the choice option because of the close correlation between educational level and the formation and use of an ideology.

These findings are essentially confirmed in the studies conducted by Valerie Martinez, Kenneth Godwin, and Frank R. Kemerer (Moe1995), and Michael Heise, Kenneth D. Colburn Jr., and Joseph F. Lamberti (Moe1995). Both studies found choice parents were more educated and had higher educational expectations for their children than did non-choice parents. The San Antonio study, however, looked specifically at who chooses. The researchers discovered that the single most important factor was the mother’s educational level (Heise, et.al. in Moe 1995). While their analysis identified eight (8) variables that when combined, predicted choice with 90 percent accuracy, the one variable with the largest influence was the educational level of the mother. (The other seven indicators were gender of the student [female], parent’s educational expectations for child, race [Anglo], regularity of church attendance, parental dissatisfaction with previous public school, parental activity at school, and family on federal assistance.) Once again, these studies contained no information about specific ideologies, so directional left or right generalizations cannot be made. However, since the educational level of the parent again appears to strongly influence the motivation of that parent to demand choice, ideology could be at work.

Other research about private voucher systems (Greene 2000; Carnoy 2001) follows much the same patterns. Data is gathered through surveys and then analyzed to discover whether or not the choice systems are actually helping the recipients. No studies have focused on ideology. Also, all of these private programs are available to only low-income families, so any data collected is necessarily biased. The only public opinion research conducted about vouchers was done by Terry Moe in Schools, Vouchers, and the American Public (2001).

Moe gathered his data through a commercial polling organization which conducted random telephone surveys of 4,700 adults in the United States. Moe’s analysis yielded several important pieces of information. First, Americans appear to be on both sides of the voucher issue. They feel that private schools are better than public schools, but they also have strong attachments to the public school system and its social and democratic ideals. Moe calls this support of the public schools “public school ideology” and defines it as “a sympathy or attachment that has little to do with performance” (278). This is interesting because it supports the idea that people’s ideas about vouchers are strongly influenced by their underlying values and beliefs--their mass belief system or ideology. His research also supports the connection between educational level and ideology--he found that those with more education were more likely to think in ideological terms.

One aspect of his survey focused on how people process information about vouchers. He found that as the interview progressed, people began to structure their thinking about vouchers in stronger, more coherent ways. Again, this could indicate the influence of ideological reasoning--as they gain more information, people fit that information into their belief systems, essentially checking how well the concept agrees with their values and beliefs. Unfortunately, Moe’s study does not directly address ideology except in terms of his “public school ideology”. His findings do note a wrong way shift among the least educated--when asked to associate vouchers with a political party, they tend to select the Democratic party when in reality it is the Republican party that supports vouchers. Overall, Moe’s results, while exploring opinion on vouchers, fall short of the mark in terms of ideology.

In terms of a person’s ideology influencing their position on vouchers, the research is mute. Ideology as a driving force has not been studied by any person or group. However, the link between educational level and the development and use of an ideology has been well established (Converse 1964). Interestingly, most of the literature reviewed concedes the debate over school choice “is driven by ideology, not facts,” (Smith and Meier 1995, 131) yet none of the research has focused on support for this basic assumption. Although the evidence is scanty, there is enough to discern some ideological influence. Again and again, those parents who select choice, who actively pursue other schooling options for their children, are shown to have attained higher levels of education, usually at least some college, than those parents who do not pursue alternatives to public schools. Therefore, one could conclude that these particular parents are driven by some basic values and beliefs.

More research is needed about the influence of ideology on a citizen’s support of vouchers. Education is a critical component of democratic life in the United States. The theory is that a well-educated citizenry is necessary for a democracy to survive. Vouchers would create a fundamental change in the education of the American public. Another direction for research would be to study the likelihood of change through the initiative process versus change through normal political action. Moe (2001) discusses some of the weaknesses of change through initiative, using California as an example. A study focusing on the role of ideology in those unsuccessful initiative campaigns may be illuminating. In addition, since it has been established that public policy does respond to public opinion, the basis for those opinions needs to be explored. Education is especially well linked to public opinion because it is in California under not only local but also state control. The policies created by the political elites should reflect the opinions of the public, but those opinions need to be informed. Researchers should look at the ideological elements that influence education policies. Clearly, educational issues and ideology are linked. The challenge now is to define that relationship.

Carnoy, Martin. (2001). Do School Vouchers Improve Student Performance? Washington, D.C.: Economic Policy Institute.

Converse, Philip E. (1964). The Nature of Belief Systems in Mass Publics. Ideology and Discontent. Edited by David E. Apter. New York, NY: Free Press.

Glynn, Carroll J., Susan Herbst, Garrett J. O’Keefe, and Robert Y. Shapiro. (1999). Public Opinion. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.

Greene, Jay. (2000). The Effects of School Choice: An Evaluation of the Charlotte Children’s Scholarship Fund Program. Civic Report.12: 1-15.

Hoover, Kenneth R. (1994). Ideology and Political Life. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.

Kemerer, Frank R., and Kimi Lynn King. (1995). Are School Vouchers Constitutional? Phi Delta Kappan. 77(4): 307-311.

Moe, Terry, Ed. (1995). Private Vouchers. Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press.

Moe, Terry M. (2001). Schools, Vouchers, and the American Public. Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press.

Moe, Terry, and John E. Chubb. (1990). Politics, Markets and America’s Schools. Washington, D.C.: The Brookings Institution.

Page, Benjamin, and Robert Y. Shapiro. (1993). The Rational Public and Democracy. Reconsidering the Democratic Public. Edited by George E. Marcus and Russell L. Hanson. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press.

Schneider, Mark, Paul Teske, and Melissa Marschall. (2000). Choosing Schools: Consumer Choice and the Quality of American Schools. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Smith, Kevin B., and Kenneth J. Meier. (1995). The Case Against School Choice: Politics, Markets and Fools. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe.

Van Dyke, Vernon. (1995). Ideology and Political Choice. Chatham, NJ: Chatham House Publishers.