This post is bombshell news. Send it to every legislator in Oklahoma.
The Tarrance Group is a Republican “strategic research and polling firm,” that helps elect Republican candidates. It was engaged by pro-voucher forces to find out how Oklahomans feel about vouchers. Its corporate sponsors include Betsy DeVos’ American Federation for Children, which is passionately devoted to vouchers.
The results produced by the pollsters must have been very disappointing to the funders. I don’t think this poll was released to the public.
The first poll was conducted March 3, 2022. It found that most people were opposed to vouchers. A second poll was conducted from November 28-December 1, 2022. It reported that opposition to vouchers had grown stronger.
This story should be national news.
The pollsters asked:
Do you favor or oppose using taxpayer dollars to fund private school tuition?
In March, 33% said they favor the proposition.
By December, support for vouchers had fallen to 24%.
In March, those opposing vouchers were 61%.
By December, the opposition had grown to 74%.
Three-quarters of Oklahomans oppose vouchers.
The next set of questions began:
Now I would like to read you a list of statements about using taxpayer dollars to fund private education. Please listen and tell me, for each one, whether knowing about this statement would make you more likely or less likely to support using taxpayer dollars to fund private school tuition.
Statement: These voucher programs mean there is less money available to maintain and improve our public schools.
The % who were “more likely” to support vouchers fell from 37% to 19% between March and December.
The % who were “less likely” to support vouchers grew from 52% in March to 74% in December.
Open the PDF. What is crystal clear is that the public opposes vouchers and their opposition is growing stronger, especially when they think that vouchers will hurt their local public schools.
No wonder that the worst enemy of vouchers is a public referendum.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
While vouchers generally make no sense for any states, for states will large rural communities whose schools are often underfunded, vouchers have the potential devastate the community public schools that are already operating on austerity budgets. Small communities should defend their public schools and their right to decide how their public money is spent instead of yielding to the interests of the already wealthy. Vouchers benefit the affluent.
No surprise. It’s the same in Utah and legislators rammed vouchers through anyway. But it’s nearly 2 years to the next election and Utahns just vote for incumbents, so no one will hold legislators accountable.
The Tarrance Group is an interesting collection of Republicans. Its website lists five “congressional offices”, and two of them are former Florida commissioners of agriculture. Two of the corporate clients listed, United Soybean Board and U.S. Farmers Ranchers Alliance, are Big Ag. Clients also include Associated Builders and Contractors and Colorado Contractors Association. One of the Tarrance Group’s listed clients is U.S. Congressman David Joyce of Ohio, who is discussed as introducing legislation enabling child labor, in the following article about the recent rise of child labor in the U.S., especially in agriculture, and a trend in Republican states to repeal child labor laws: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/feb/11/us-child-labor-laws-violations. Oh yeah, these voucher law sugar daddies care about children sooo much!
Sorry, that was “constitutional offices”, not congressional.
The problem I see in all these stories about how the public does not support vouchers implicitly assumes they would be outraged if vouchers were pushed through state legislatures. They are not, as has been proven over and over in state after state. Regardless of what they think about vouchers, it does not impact many, if any, votes. Between the inability to link education policy with their votes in their minds–as is demonstrated by the make up of many state legislatures–and gerrymandering, there is a very, very narrow path for vouchers opponents’ success. Again, here in Ohio, we’re the poster children. I have no doubt, taken as a single issue, there would be overwhelming opposition, certainly a solid majority, to kill vouchers forever. But when you mix in all the other issues and bundle them into candidates and parties, then add a heaping dollop of Democratic Party incompetence, we only promote the ones who make and profit from voucher policy.
Full throated support for public education by the Democratic Party could provide a political windfall similar to health care in 2018. If Democrats would only take the mantle.
Reblogged this on What's Gneiss for Education.
The way OK attempts to get around these rural areas is to create the law that only applies to a city or county with a population of X. Essentially isolating the law for OKC and Tulsa thereby eliminating the rural areas. However, for the purposes of education, it would still effect the rural communities as their pie would still be smaller and they know that. It is going to be interesting to see if the rural communities can hold off the push again or just go with the party line this year.
Up until now, rural Republicans in Texas have blocked vouchers.