School choice

Nevada’s education establishment should take notice of a recent opinion poll on parent satisfaction with public schools.

The poll, conducted for the Nevada Policy Research Institute and the Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice, found that only 11 percent of respondents would send their children to a public school if they had the ability to pick any available option. About half of poll participants said they would send their kids to private school instead, a quarter would choose a charter school and 15 percent would pick home schooling.

“It is clear that Nevadans are doubtful of the effectiveness of our monolithic public education system and want more choice when it comes to how their children are educated,” said Andy Matthews, NPRI’s communications director.

Nevada lags far behind other states when it comes to school choice. The state’s charter school law is among the weakest in the nation and vouchers remain a foreign concept.

There is no legislative appetite to improve the situation, as teachers unions remain among the most powerful special interests in Carson City.

It’s worth noting, however, that organized labor and entrenched lawmakers aren’t the only obstacles to enacting meaningful reforms. When school choice issues have qualified as ballot questions in other states, they’ve generally failed because taxpayers in suburban areas and upper-middle-class neighborhoods haven’t lined up in support. These voters might very well send their children to private school if they could afford it, but that doesn’t mean they’re unhappy with their public schools. In fact, they’re often quite satisfied with the education offered around the corner from their homes.

The best issue for school-choice advocates to tackle in Clark County is deconsolidation. Parents from Henderson to Summerlin and Spring Valley to North Las Vegas find the Clark County School District’s unresponsive, centralized bureaucracy impossible to navigate and lacking in accountability. Busting up this behemoth would put some competitive pressure on principals and teachers to deliver the kind of education all parents expect.

That’s a ballot question we’d love to see.