Wisconsin Voters in Favor of Giving Parents More Public School Options
State Voters Currently in Favor of Charter School Expansion

Close to two-thirds of Wisconsin voters (64 percent) favor creating more public school options for parents according to a public opinion survey commissioned in August for the Wisconsin Charter Schools Association. The poll, conducted by the Glover Park Group, based in Washington D.C., also found that Wisconsin voters believe that allowing parents to choose the most appropriate public school for their child will improve the entire public school system.

Voters in the city of Milwaukee are more strongly in favor of more public school choices, with
three-in-four voters (75 percent) favoring giving parents more public school options.

By a more than two-to-one margin, Wisconsin voters believe that giving parents more choices
would help improve the broader public school system (46 percent) compared to those who
believe that it would harm it (only 20 percent). The opinions were even stronger amongst voters
in Milwaukee, where 53 percent of voters felt that giving parents more choices would improve
public education, compared to only 12 percent who felt it would harm the public school system.

While awareness of charter schools is relatively low, one-third of Wisconsin voters (34 percent)
currently favor the expansion of them, compared to only nine percent who were against. More
than half (57 percent) of voters are currently undecided.

However, when Wisconsin voters were told more about charter schools, support for their
expansion rose significantly to 58 percent (61 percent in Milwaukee). Opposition statewide
remained low, at only nine percent.

More than eight in 10 Wisconsin voters were in favor of many of the things that charter schools
do, including holding students, teachers and parents accountable for improving student
achievement (91 percent); providing a more structured learning environment, more student
discipline and requiring more parental involvement (90 percent); and rewarding high-quality
teachers with higher pay (86 percent). Voters also clearly expressed a desire for public schools to
have greater decision-making flexibility, while being held accountable for how students learn.

“Wisconsin voters are committed to the idea that giving parents access to more public school
choices would improve our public school system,” said John Gee, executive director of the
Wisconsin Charter Schools Association. “One thing is very clear from our research, and that’s
the more that Wisconsin voters know about charter schools, the more they like them.”

The Glover Park Group conducted a survey of 600 Registered Voters statewide and an
oversample of 100 voters in the City of Milwaukee between August 21 and August 28, 2008 on
behalf of the Wisconsin Charter Schools Association and the National Alliance for Public
Charter Schools. The margin of error on a sample size of 600 is +/-4%. The margin of error on
the oversample (n=161 total) is +/-7.7%.

“Wisconsin voters clearly express a demand for more high-quality choices for parents,” said
Nelson Smith, president of the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools. “It makes sense for
Wisconsin policymakers to alleviate current obstacles in order to give parents more access to
charter schools, and then to hold those schools accountable for how well they educate kids.”