school type preferences for the total sample for school parents. why would they choose one particular school type versus another. and then we'll go through some charts about this school choice reforms and then wrap up talking about common core, standardized testing, as well as the state intervention in low-performing schools. here we see some of the trend lines for the general public's views on k-12 education. the red line has been stable. this year 60% of the general public said k-12 is heading off on the right track. 32% said the right direction and we've seen an up tick on the positive response from 26% to 32% over the last three years. it's still 2-1 a negative view of k-12 in the country. when you look at the public's rating of the federal government, 8 out of 10

americansamerican s give the federal government a fair or poor rating when it comes to handling matters in k-12 education. it's interesting to note the strongly held negative view, the poor rating is almost twice as large as the bined aggregate. 20% gave a rating of good or excellent. you see the line at the bottom 2% said that the federal government was doing an excellent job. now we'll mover on to questions about school type preference expressed by those who took our survey. if it were your decision and you could select any type of school, what type of school would you select in order to attain the best education for your child? so all things being equal, what's your type? 41% chose a private school.

36 said regular public school. 12% said charter school and 9% said home school. you compare that to the one on the bottom. those reflect actual enrollments of students in these school types. 84% of students in the country are going to a regular public school or traditional public school. 4% are going to public charter schools. 9% to private school and 3% it's estimated that are being home schooled. there's just a huge difference between these privately -- personally expressed references in our phone interviews and these actual enrollment patterns. and here's the trends we see on this question over the last four years. you can see that private school preferences have been the plurality for the last three years, hovering low 40s to mid-40s.

and about more than one-third in the mid to high 30s has been the public school preference. roughly the last few years roughly 1 out of 10 preferring public charter schools and 1 out of 10 preferring home schooling. so just thinking about the subgroup of school parents in our sample. this represents roughly a quarter of the respondents who took our survey this year. we asked a question, why would you choose that particular school in the previous question. what's the reason? this is an open end question. so our friends at braun will record these verbatim responses. usually it's a single word or phrase or sentence, and then we have categories that we code these responses into. and this is what we come up with. so you can see the largest proportion said better education or quality, which is kind of -- it's not too surprising.

then we also see 14% saying they would choose a school because of -- they want their child to get individual attention, one on one attention. 12% say better teachers. 10% said academics and curriculum and another 10% said class size or student-teacher ratio ratio. if you took the first, third and fourth categories, about 39% are saying something that -- about school quality, student learning, teaching, academics is a reason why they'd choose the school and combine the second and fifth categories that reflects something larger about where 24% are saying they would choose a school for some measure of like personalized learning, customized learning, individualized learning. now we'll move on to the

questions about school choice. and so we asked questions about charters, esas, vouchers and tax credit scholarships. so we'll continue the levels of support and opposition. we see that the support is a majority across the board. and 62% are supporting esas. 61% of the total sample 00:20:44 -- total sample supports vouchers. 60% support tax credit scholarships and 53% are still supporting charter schools. about one-third opposed to vouchers, 29% opposed to tax-credit scholarships. 28% esas, 27% opposed to charter schools. >> in the survey because there may be some folks that aren't familiar with some of the terms like esa, tax-credit vouchers, et cetera. for the survey respondents, you would explain what it was? >> that's right. >> those who didn't know. >> right.

we do define and give context for each of these school choice policies. we do have a paired set of questions for charters and vouchers because these policies have been around a little longer. we ask a paired set of questions. one asking, based on what you know or have heard from others what do you think of charter schools or school vouchers. so getting a raw sense. those numbers which are not reflected on this chart here but still pluralities that support charter schools and vouchers without us giving information and with the definition, these numbers rise up. we took the same approach with the common core questions later in the survey. if we look at the margins, and it looks like the alignment has gotten off here. the margins are high across the board where the esas have the largest margin between the positive and negative responses.

plus 28 for vouchers and plus 26 for charter schools. the strongest held views, plus 16 for esas. low is plus 10 points for charter schools. here's some trend lines for the question on vouchers. and we see that there's been an uptick in the support over the last four years from vouchers from 46% to 56%. also an up tick in the opposition to vouchers from 28% to 33%. but one interesting -- and we've noted this on an earlier chart. a strongly positive view on vouchers matching the combined negative view on vouchers. 34% favor vouchers. 33% strongly oppose vouchers.

here's a trend line that looks different for education savings accounts. it looks like the line wiggling a little bit. this program is very new to a lot of people and a lot of the folks are probably being exposed to this consupportcept for the first time and we're providing them definition. 56% of the public supported esas. this year 62%. last year 34% opposed esas. this year 28%. i'd expect as we continue in future years, i expect this to wiggle. it's going to take some time for education savings accounts to diffuse in terms of understanding. to go through demographic findings.

the two subgroups that are the relatively speaking the most likely to oppose school choice and least likely to support school choice are seniors age 55 and older or democrats and leaning democrats. that's pretty clear across the board. on the flip side, the subgroups most lookly to support school choice would be your school parents, low-income earners, young adults and republicans and leaning republicans. so on our voucher question we saw that sub urbanites were more supportive than urbannites when it came to school vouchers. for somebody to do this for a little while. it's a curious finding where the conventional wisdom in school politics is urbanits are more supportive. we'll see if that olds up next year. republicans and independents are

aligning and they do align on charter schools, vouchers, tax credit scholarships. six showing significantly higher numbers. independents and democrats are also supporting esas about the same level and no significant differences on that type of school policy. when it comes to state rnt intervention in low-performing schools, another interesting democrats were more likely to cite school choice as a useful action to families in that situation where state intervenes in a low performing school. more likely than republicans to point to school choice. so we'll finish up talking about common core, standardized testing and state intervention in schools. we've been asking about common core for the last two years now. and essentially in a total

sample, the national sample, the results are unchanged. roughly 50% support common core with some definition, with some context. 40% are opposed to common core. school parents, it's a little bit murkier. we see 47% saying they support common core. and just under 47% saying that they oppose common core. it's about break even on the positive and opposed amongst school parents. then we asked some questions about standardized testing. for both the national sample and the subgroup of school parents weave seen an up tick in those who say the time spent on standardized testing is too high. if you look at those red bars, red chunks on those bars we see that last year the general public said 36% of the general public said time spent on

standardized testing was too high. now it's 42%. that's gone up six points. among school parents it's gone up a little bit from 44% last year to 47% this year saying it's too high. and that's more than twice the other end of the spectrum saying time spent is too low on standardized testing. and then finally this question about state intervention and low performing schools. give a rating on a scale 1 to 5 on how useful a certain action would be when a state intervene into a low-performing school. we're seeing this across states where there are state takeovers that have all sorts of mechanisms and ways of implementation and parent trigger-type policies emerge especially on the west coast.

so when we ask this question 41%, the largest proportion, said supplying a voucher or scholarship or esa would be a useful action to affected families and students. and then compare that to those -- just a quarter saying converting district schools to charters would be useful. 25% said replacing school staff, dismissing school staff and leadership would be useful. and then one out of five said closing the school would be useful. just to review some specific findings. there has been an increase in support of esas. there's been a drop in support for charter schools from 61% to 53%. again, the opposition has not grown. what we've seen, some of our panelists might have some insights into this and some comments. there's more, those who were

saying they supported charter schools last year moving into the don't know category and unsure category. that alone, it's odd to report on don't know responses, but that was an interesting finding. i'm not sure what to make of it. as i mentioned a couple minutes ago, when the state intervenes in a low-performing school, the largest proportion saying a particular action would work would be supplying students with vouchers, scholarships, esas. 41% gave that response. public opinion on common core remains mixed. margins are positive. the intensity is in the other direction going negative. that's in stark contrast to the choice questions. large positive margins. also mild to moderate positive intensities. 4 out of 10 respondents said the amount of time spent on testing was too high and that's in the

national sample. and that proportion is higher among school parents. 47% say that. almost 4 out of 5, 77%, give a fair or poor rating to the federal government when it comes to k-12 education matters. and that's something to think about as reauthorizationed start to be discussed over the next month. with that, i'll just say, thank you very much. [applause] >> now for our respondents. i think we'll just go right down the line. i've asked our panel to remind them brevity is the soul of wit. to max kind of five minutes of your quick responses, what struck you first. first off, kara kerwin, the president of the center for education reform. ms. kerwin: thank you. great results. one observation i have, and you

were talking about this before but i look at the charter school question and the decrease in support. i would have one observation for the group to possibly throw out and consider. we have seen a lot of activity in our statehouses across the country going after esas, trying to get voucher programs passed. and we've seen on the other side in chartering, it's mostly either to roll back charters overregulate them or really little or no progress. still eight states without charter school laws. there was a long time ago, charter schools were sort of the only thing taking off. now that we have our elected officials boldly trying to expand options, i wonder if the public has more knowledge because there's more talk about it than the charter.

and one thing i would also suggest is that a lot of families don't even know they are in a charter school, especially if they are in a state where only local districts can authorize a charter school. a lot of families don't know they are in a school choice or that it's something different. only a couple of observations i might throw out there. host: thank you. next up we have gerard robinson. just recently announced gerard will be joining us at aei as a resident fellow. before that he's had a couple other nice gigs. he was the secretary of education for the commonwealth of virginia, commissioner for the state of florida, president of the black alliance for educational options. if anybody would have a view on some of these findings it would be you. mr. robinson: thank you, mike and paul. education matters to america because education matters to states. and it matters to states because

right now 41 of our states have education as its number one line item. when a governor or state chief and state leaders are looking at a knowledge, education matters. number one, there's great dissatisfaction. that doesn't cheer me up as a school choice guy. it makes me wonder where we're going as a nation. the majority of our children in public education. we've got to make it work. when democrats, republicans, urban, suburban, leaning forward, lower income, high or income, over 50% agree in each category that it's not going in the right direction, that should be a wake-up call we need to do the right thing. the second takeaway, 84% have their kids in public schools. look at vouchers, charters education savings accounts, even those in the public sector want options. i don't see it as an anti-public school option. i see it as an opportunity to

diversify how we deliver education to our children. by doing that we'll be a stronger nation. i think those numbers point in the right direction. host: and our final panelist, and after their initial remarks we'll make this a bit more free free-wheeling discussion. wee have matt chingos who is from the brookings institution and director of the brown center on education policy. mr. chingos: i first want to justice say say surveys are really important and it's great that paul and his colleagues at the center for educational choice do them. there's also educational surveys. it is important we have all of them. on one hand without them all we have to go on are anecdotes. if these surveys weren't done every year then we'd have to go the new york times and talk about how we talked to some urban parents and they are real upset about standardized testing.

it's real great we have them. i like this focus on school choice and it delves deeping into that than some of the other educational choice surveys. the choice focus is largely on charters and vouchers and newer voucher-like policies like esas and tax-credit scholarship programs. makes sense in some respects because the survey results show parents want private schools more than they are getting them. 41% choose private school for their children if the sky was the limit. but only 9% choose that option. it sets up a political conundrum. on one hand, you see majority support for all these choice programs. whenever anyone tries to do one they get passed once in a while. but it's politically very controversial. not to say we should give up on them. one area i'd like to see some of the survey work go is to probe more deeply on choice among public schools.

84% of children in this country are attending public schools. so i think the kinds of questions and things you can learn more about are, do parents have enough choices? do these 41% who are saying they want a private school, and most of them could actually get a private school, because they are thinking of the traditional public school option as a fixed , as a given option for them or would they be interested in it was in a neighborhood they can't afford to live but they see as a good public school where they'd like to send their child. do these parents understand their choices or do they live in a place where the choice architecture is so hopelessly complicated that they don't know they have options but they don't understand the details of how to make it happen? do they find they have enough information to make informed choices?

it's one of my hobby horses, the choice conversation often focuses largely on charters, vouchers, voucher-like policies. those are important, worth figuring out how to get them right. there's this whole other area that doesn't get enough attention and work like this could really add value to it in the future. host: thank you. maybe the first question i'll kick to all of you, what was -- in going through the mindings here, what was the finding that surprised you the most? paul, we'll start with you. you conducted the survey. that will buy time for the rest of you. the finding that surprised you the most. mr. diperna: that's a good question. i covered it in one of the slides where some of the differences based on where respondents lived. whether that's the difference between suburbanites and urbanites. that is going against

conventional wisdom of school choice. and then the question about state intervention and low performing schools and we saw democrats citing school choice as a useful remedy at a higher proportion than republicans. some of those political differences, which persisted not just on the choice items but on many of the items. and that's maybe the last point i would make. i am a let's come together type of guy, and i think it's important to build bridges across the aisle. we do see differences, significant differences between republicans and democrats on a lot of these issues. that's just a reality we have to confront and face with both sides. mr. mcshane: kara, most surprising finding? ms. kerwin: so if we were

thinking or from the parents' perspective or respondents who said they have school-age children, what's interesting is that despite the fact so many of them felt there was too much testing and pressure on testing, there is almost a 50/50 split on the need for common core and then their valuing quality more or better education. but so, and it goes to the national debate that's going on now about testing, about common core and what parents actually value. but i wonder -- and some of those questions, paul, this is a question for you, when you were characterizing them into better education or quality, what -- were there just some -- is it -- does it just feel safer? mr. diperna: that's a great question. and we don't really define quality in that item.

quality is one of those trigger words. it's going to be coded. usually it's better quality. higher quality. we just leave it to however the respondent takes that. and we do code for things like safety, more structure discipline. and that actually, that is -- it was a little surprising those were fewer responses than i would have expected. mr. mcshane: gerard, most surprising finding. mr. robinson: democrats and republicans agreeing on something. one, that we need options and, second, that we don't like the way the country is going. so it's almost two here. i don't like it and i don't like which way we're going, yet i want to give options yet when you introduce bills you see democrats and republicans split. more democrats are starting to come on board but that's a big find. what scares me is how many

people think we're going the wrong direction given the billions of dollars we invest. mr. mcshane: matt? mr. chingos: i was surprised by that statistic in my remarks. the large number of people parents in particular, who are most interested in non-public options. 41% said they'd said their kid to a private school if they could make any choice as compared to 9% that do. it reminds me of this "new yorker" cartoon. it depicts two affluent mothers saying, i believe in the concept of public education. mr. mcshane: that table is very interesting as well. one of the other ones, a 3-1 home school split. three times as many want to home school their kids as opposed to actually doing. so that's a really interesting one. paul, you did some sort of trend line. for the panel in general that

observed these numbers over time, a lot of what paul presented were pretty stable numbers. we see roughly the same numbers over time. of the stuff you presented, this i understand is going beyond what the survey says, so i'm asking you to conjecture. this is a safe place for conjecture. but of those numbers you looked at, did you see some that said these have the potential for moving or some of these are baked in? 60-30 for vouchers? 50/50 for charter schools or do you see these things moving around? kara, maybe start with you. ms. kerwin: we've done -- paul knows this, too. we've done some similar surveying. when you explain what charter schools are to paurntrents or -- parents or families, we find

72% support them. you've done polls about parent choice. instead of saying the word vouchers. i think word choice is important. we know an overwhelming majority of americans appreciate school choice, whether they are public, private, charter, red, green yellow. they like making choices. that's what your survey is finding. as we see more and more of these programs take off, it is sort of like to know them is to love them. when someone sees something that works for them, you'll see increases. if we had more access to those vouchers, or if there was more of a population in charter schools. i think you'd see growth in those numbers and types of support. when you know something about something, you are more inclined to support it. mr. robinson: i see a continuing

increase in charter schools enrollment in urban areas where you fund some of the most challenged populations looking for best options. i see esa growing than some of the other options. for one reason. it benefits me quickly and puts resources in my hand to get services within this traditional system and look for services outside. that's important. traditional vouchers where they are being tested or not, will continue to grow. and for me, in terms of language, parental choice as we know will continue to expand itself. charters and esas are new articulations of it. on the private side, i think es asare really going to shore up. mr. chingos: i said nice things about surveys. maybe i'll beat up on surveys a little bit. it's important to be candid about the limitations of any kind of survey as i'm sure paul

is aware. the way you ask these questions really matters. we did some experiments. you want to give people information that can change their opinion. the way you ask the question frame the question, order the questions can really matter. you are asking people a bunch of detailed questions about things we all think a lot about but most people don't think a whole lot about. that's how you get some of these sensitivities. most people don't know a whole lot about any given policy area. for example, i once heard folks did a survey of americans and asked them whether they prefer $1,000 tax deduction or $1,000 tax credit. obviously the tax credit is worth more because you get $1000. the deduction reduces your taxable income. the majority said they would rather get the deduction.

so how do you go from republicans, democrats holding hands on the survey saying we support school choice to a more polarized political debate, when vouchers get proposed? you're going from this sterile environment of someone talking on the phone or doing a computer survey to a more politicized environment where people are updating their believes and saying i believe in this concept of choice when asked the question, but the party i am in the legion to tells me this is terrible. maybe we shouldn't read too much into any particular survey about what the future portends. but i do think just to restate one of gerard's points that rebranding different things can help. vouchers have a troubled history. if you can take what's basically a voucher program and rebrand it as a tax scholarship program you can get the same thing but in a

politically palatable way. mr. mcshane: i think this is available on everybody's fact sheet. in the lower left-hand column , when you broke out those schooling preferences. i used to be a high school teacher. now i am seeing everyone rifling through their back. looking at those school types and the reasons people chose those school types. something that was really interesting to me. for those people that pick -- that their ideal school type is a regular public school, they said they value diversity, variety, association, peers. for those who valued a private school, the highest were better education, individual attention, same true for charter schools and home schools. when i respond to that, and i'd like to hear your thoughts on this, it makes me question a lot of our, the horse race narrative

or whatever when we talk about private schools versus charter schools or public schools. what are the test scores of kids in charter schools or public schools? who is doing better? who is doing worse? when i look at this, these choices might be driven by things other than parents saying i want the school that can maximize reading and math scores. that there are complex reasons parents choose these things. as we have some mixed positions up on the panel. how do you react to those findings? it seems like the motivations of families for the different school sector are different from one another. you want to tackle that one first? mr. robinson: when you talk to parents, as president of the black alliance of educational options, we support all the options, including those within the traditional public school system. when we talked to parents as to

why they decided to move from traditional school to charter school or take a voucher sometimes safety was a factor. smaller classrooms may have been something to drive them in that direction. sometimes it was a religious focus in the school which gave an advantage to the private school over the public. education made a difference as well. there are gradations of whether education is first or second but there are a number of areas or reasons people choose schools other than academics. in looking at this, it doesn't surprise me, the diversity and variety. i'd like to see that fleshed out. diversity is broader. it's income and otherwise. i'd like to see that. mr. mcshane: paul, it seemed like you wanted to jump in. mr. diperna: just to piggyback on what you were saying. this was somewhat of a surprising finding. we do state polling as well. a handful of state surveys every year. we've broken this out in other

states. even state by state it's different. the type of responses you get and how they list out under different school types. so if researchers always like to look for reasons and for further research and exploration. this item in our survey suggested and it's very hard to come up with any concrete conclusions. but it does maybe set the table for further survey work or other types of research, looking into, are there different cultures? surrounding regular public district traditional schools compared to private school culture, charter school culture. are there any real significant differences and reasons for choosing those types of schools. that does lend out for maybe some future research. mr. mcshane: and, matt, this is

interesting. the point you brought up is well taken. investment and time to be taken into the choice architecture. infrastructure. information to support parents. but it also begs the question, are we still a step or two away from there if we don't know what parents are necessarily looking for? we don't know what information to tell them? do you have any thoughts on maybe how this could guide other researchers to understand better the parental decision-making process so that we can develop that architecture and better inform parents? mr. chingos: the variation within each of these can be more interesting than the average. the average is an interesting starting point but thinking of where future work could go. i would guess that parents who say, you know, who either chose a private school or didn't but wanted to, i think they could have a lot of different reasons. you could imagine an affluent family that has access to a

pretty good public school. they were more affluent and could send their kids to the independent school, the very expensive private school in their town. a lower income family couldn't be happy with the public school option and it's the catholic school down the street they want to have access to. i think the variation could help us learn more about what considerations are for different families. mr. mcshane: great. i have one or two more questions. again, those of you following along at home or in the audience, #schoolinginamerica survey. a ton of people are already tweeting. feel free if you have questions or want to add your thoughts to the conversation, feel free. my kind of last step before we open it up is, obviously, any time polling happens in washington, d.c., people want to know the broader electoral implications of what we found. so, one, obviously the common core, there's a big wide

republican primary taking place right now. there are varying opinions on the common core within that group of people. how do you see these numbers reflecting or having an impact on potential candidates? mr. diperna: i think that -- so we do ask at the end of the survey, we did ask some questions that had electoral implications on whether they were more or less likely to support a candidate who supported vouchers or esas or common core. and, frankly, more than half said it didn't really make a difference. of the half of the total population that we surveyed there was substantial marketing -- margin more likely to vote for a pro-esa or pro voucher candidate. and then common core, more

likely to -- less likely to vote for a pro-common core candidate than they were for -- than more likely to vote for that candidate. i think, and we mentioned this before. there are relative differences. there's majority support among republicans, democrats and independents on these choice items, but there are relative differences that are significant. that maybe speak to some of that intensity. i was just reading today, this morning an article by charlie cook of the cook political report. he was talking about what republicans need to do in order to move forward. this is a response in the last week or so. the high profile supreme court decisions. and we see that young adults are maybe the most supportive of these different types of choice

policies that we're asking about. low-income earners are significantly positive on all these items. so these are nontraditional. at least what's being projected out in the media. the public perception is that these are not your traditional republican constituencies, but we're seeing these groups in our survey time and time again on questions about charters or vouchers or esas. and on the democrat side, the majority support of pluralitysupport for these items, there seems to be a disconnect between your average democrat and your it leads and those who are in leadership positions and positions they are taking, that could have implications moving forward. >> this would be again, your point that 41% -- 41 states,

education is their largest budget item but one of the topline findings of education is a priority is saying that this country trails behind a lot of other stuff. i wonder if you might speak to the state versus national. maybe some of these issues have greater salience at state levels and the national levels. speaker: if i were to talk to them including third-party candidates for this libertarian constitution or otherwise, more than 50% of the people are telling you that our public education system is going in the wrong direction, then you need a strong public school message. it is the right thing to do since the majority of our kids are in the public sector but here is the divide. that is important but you cannot support a school choice option

and leaves the public schools untapped. for there, you need to do a great job of making sure states have the right to run schools where the -- the way they should. there should not be a over heavy regulatory environment that stifles innovation at the local level. well-meaning programs once they get to the department of education and the state and trickles down to the lower levels -- local levels, we strangle too much innovation. there is a divide between state and federal. i would say if the parents, both democrats and republicans are telling us they want options the open options, this will be a challenge for the democrats with over 130 million dollars invested between 1990 and 2014 from nea. teythey have a fine line to walk. some of our people are saying they want sitting outside --

something outside the public school system. for me, i would say state first national conversation but let states do what they need to do. >> we will open it up to the crowd. i may start with the twitter question. this question was perfectly in matt's will house. you have done some of the best research on this question. in talking about standardized testing a question from twitter was, in the survey and the amount of time and the amount of money. the question was phrased, how much money could be saved by eliminating standardized tests and root -- replacing them with smaller, pragmatic competency tests. maybe you could speak to your look into the broader cost of -- the broader cost.

matt: i did a study looking at how much states were spending. it comes out to pending on how you crunch the numbers $30 a kid. i ran some tests and relations how much would you save? across the country looks like a big month -- number. that number has spread across the system. it comes out to textbook for kid. and reducing class size but .1 students. given the emphasis that policymakers are putting on standardized test and how those results are used, i think $30 a kid is a small price to pay. a lot of educators and parents rightly are worried. you ought to think about not spending too much but too

little. host: maybe we will take a question from the audience. i would like to share with you we have two rules. if you would be so kind to identify yourself and be so quiet -- kind as to ask question. -- as k a question. i wanted to talk to how matt was saying some of these educational issues, it gets lost during that political movement. what direction what activists in your company's organizations can focus on some of the localities. i am concerned that when we're looking at the state level especially not at the federal

level, if you do not have the buy-in from the school board you will not have i and from the parents and that is where the power is. do we see any movement towards that, through training parents or training, getting good people on? >> gerard, i know you will have something to share with this as well. kara: the problem have been -- has been that we have to suffice -- disenfranchised parents. we have made it into meeting for them to approach principles -- principals. informing parents about what your school district might offer, welcome them to go to things, go to parent events so

you get to know them and what their needs are. there has to be some sort of both ways you've got to be looking at. how can we reach out to parents and informing them of their options are potential options and how can we be listening to the more? if more local school districts to that, we might have a different result. it is when we see parents do -- make choices that are far more active. we have seen communities and people who say they do not know how to choose schools. they know how to choose schools really well. if we empower them and make this choices and help educate the community about their choices and what is going on, i think we will have a better result. >> i agree. >> i agree. >> outstanding. unanimity. here in the front.

>> i wanted to talk to you about educating parents. i have been talking to the suburban moms. basically, they hear a rumor and it gets carried away like the charter schools are supported by the people who support for profit prisons. all of a sudden you hear these people talking about how they are going to have these schools that will have the same structure as the prison and that is why they will go down stream. then you have the anti-common core people. people who have dyslexia have a problem with common core. there is no one definition of what common core is because no one seems to get it in the suburban role. what is the definition of charter versus schools' choice? my daughter moved to illinois --

how do you have a national standard and have this debate because people do relocate. if they relocate from the south to the north. >> this is about the common core standards or information about schools in general? >> you cannot talk until you have a definition. >> how do we -- inform the public and informing the public debate, standardizing definitions of what this is one of charter school is or this is what the common core is. >> i would say it is hard to educate people about we think about education is our pet issue. i think about non-education areas and how hard it would be to educate me if i was not just it, if someone was trying to rein the information down.

that can often work against the effort of trying to educate people. a political scientist friend of mine did the study of attitudes about -- and knowledge about the common core. you would think all the public attention it is getting, people would be more informed about it. we ask people to respond to factual questions, they are more likely to get them wrong. the political polarization had pushed people away from knowing the simple facts about things. it is kind of a depressing response. >> during our increasingly polarized times. when i hear you mentioned for profit prisons, charter schools, challenges with definition is not something that is endemic just to public education. about the buy american campaign.

that is something that is a broad heart. what we need in america is not a common core conversation, but a conversation about a common cord. one that links us in time to the principles that made this country great. and what role can education play sustaining the economic and social welfare of this nation? a conversation gets is on the same page to say what do i think is important and we can maneuver from there. i guess from the civil society standpoint we would have a higher conversation [indiscernible] >> may be go to another twitter question. there were comments that were related to the finding poll that the age breakdown, opponents to school choice can't -- 10 to's -- tend to skew old. i am interested in why we think

that is. kara: the people who are -- do not want change are older. or you -- you have teachers who are tenured and have not -- they do not want change. they try to maybe enter the teaching profession and found it to be very hostile or they have been in schools themselves and experience it. millennial's understand freedom a lot more. those are conjuring factors. you have the status quo that will fight for no change in the young people who want change. >> you have a dependent population, those 65 and over. they tend to vote a lot and they will vote their interests and

they want to make sure that we are not spending enormous amounts of money on one thing that will not support whether -- what they need whether it is support for medicaid or other educational issues. for me, it is also, i am older i need to protect this versus the younger generation. she can be more liberal about her ideas. then she will become much more conservative area -- conservative. >> may be a question from the audience. >> i work at the nea. i went to bring the attention to the sample size of 1000 and mentioned that the subset of parents was a quarter. we are talking about 250 people

who are involved in making choices that are about their students. and what mr. robinson still said about people who are not necessarily in that democratic -- demographic area they may not have all the correct information. that is the comment. and to mr. robinson and mr. chingos. what is the impact provided everyone can have choice about the school they send their child to on education and the second part is if there is an expanded ability to choose within public education, what does that look like? >> with all the states we have with charter schools, public school students remain the majority. in the next decade they will

probably remain the same. you have to make the math easy with 50 million. you have k-12 students now. if you -- you see more students leave. what is more important to me in terms of impact and education is what and how we deliver education. some parents said i have enough money to pay for a private school at a very elite lace in the city. but i put my kid in public school because i believe in the mission and it is close. there is a transportation factor so, for me, i do not see public education being destroyed by choice. this is how we deliver options to a diverse school of americans. >> if we say we are going to give a $10,000 voucher for the parent to show up at 10:30 a.m. on tuesday at the apostolic fly,

that will attract a very different group of parents and have a very different impact than a different kind of choice program like the one we have here in d.c. where you go through a lottery. the main drawback to that system is there is still a default school which is the school in the area where you can afford to buy or rent real estate. you can imagine a version of that that broke down those areas and provided to all families the choices that only affluent families enjoyed through their ability to choose where to live. providing that choice on its own is not enough. my brookings colleague russ whitehurst has done work on how this functions in different districts.

it matters, do you provide accurate and relevant information to parents to help them make informed choices, do you have a system that is accessible to everyone and not just for people who show up on tuesday at 10:30 a.m. do you cover transportation costs or is it for parents who can figure out transportation and so on and so forth area -- so forth. it looks like it was -- it varies a lot. we do have some clear ideas about what it got to look like which is going to determine the effect it has on the kids who make that choices in the system. we have lacked friday, we see hundreds of thousands of people standing in line -- when we have lacked friday, we see hundreds of thousands of people standing in line. maybe people would not wait. when we give parents choice and

we see thousands of people lining up and taking advantage they want something different and now they have an option to do so. if you made it every day we know this internally, thousands of seats in states that are still not filled area they are available. people qualify. they have not had it. there is some more work we have to do. just because it is available does not mean everyone will jump at it. kara: we have seen that really take off where the parent has the ability to choose, we have seen our traditional public schools improved medically, do things to attract parents treating them as consumers. i would not say it is about abolishing or dismantling public education. it is helping to create a more thriving market for all sorts of schools to be viable options so that you do not have this crappy school that you are assigned to. that all of your options are

better because of it. >> one question from twitter. people are digging into the report itself which is awesome. about the urban=-rural split. there was a suburban-urban split but there are a lot of rural folks who are not fans of education savings accounts vouchers. even though we might think of them in a republican constituency that they might do that. gerard is nodding so we will let him go first. gerard: it is a good question. this goes back to the earlier what were some surprising findings and we did see in small town and rural areas and we ask how where -- when you describe where you live and there was substantial support among rural and small-town americans that had significantly

higher support for vouchers compared to urban folks and that is another finding that goes against conventional wisdom. the thing -- i did not pull out rural respondents as much because the sample size is a little bit smaller than those who were in the urban pull of respondents -- pool of respondents. the margin of error is higher. there were 250 school parents in the survey. much science has gone into survey design so they can truly reflect the population that you are trying to evaluate, and so through randomization and what they call random digit dialing and with some weighting after the fieldwork which is a standard approach to correcting for demographic discrepancies

we can get an accurate reflection of school parents within a margin of error. even with surveying 250 folks in our survey. >> we have -- that is the witching hour so can we have a round of applause? this will be on youtube tomorrow. it was great having you.