Utah's support for school choice is solid

I don't like my driver's license photo. But then again, who does? It's just a one-off snapshot that doesn't show the real me or tell the whole story.

I feel the same way about recent suggestions that public support for tuition tax credits is on the wane in Utah ("Tuition credits bill adjusted," Jan. 8). It just isn't the whole picture.

Five years ago, there wasn't enough public support to get a tuition tax credit or school choice bill out of any legislative committee. Last year, 68 percent of Utahns supported the Carson Smith Scholarship bill, and it passed out of both the Utah House and Senate, only to be vetoed by former Gov. Olene Walker. The public outcry to the veto was so passionate that many believe it cost Walker her job.

Five years ago, school choice was so far down on the public's priority list that it was a non-issue in legislative races. Last year, Scott Matheson made Jon Huntsman's support of school choice the key distinction between them. And Huntsman won by 16 points.

Five years ago, few people thought that a privately funded scholarship program for low-income Utahns to attend private schools would net many applications. Last year, and almost every year since its inception, there were more than a thousand parents on the program's waiting list.

This is the larger picture that Utahns should remember in gauging public support for school choice.

Public opinion surveys are simply snapshots of a particular time and mood. That's why one poll can show public support for school choice at 36 percent, and other polls, like the ones conducted by Wirthlin Worldwide (now Harris Interactive) in 2000 and 2003, can show public support for tuition tax credits at 60 percent and 57 percent, respectively.

Moreover, experience and common sense tell us that public opinion on controversial issues is not cut and dried. It is more nuanced. For example, in the polls conducted by Wirthlin Worldwide, respondents answered a series of questions about tuition tax credits, not just whether they favored them or not. Sixty percent of those polled supported tuition tax credits, but 64 percent thought it was more likely that they would make public schools better; 64 percent thought they would prevent tax increases; and 69 percent thought they would relieve overcrowding in public schools.

Finally, it is critical to remember that how you ask a question is as important as what you ask. The annual national Phi Delta Kappa poll on education has shown declining support for school choice over the past few years. Many researchers and advocates have argued, however, that the word selection used in the poll works to artificially lower support for school choice.