A new fall survey of educators has found that the majority of public school teachers support education savings accounts (ESAs), a school choice policy that allows parent-directed dollars to be used toward pre-approved education services, including tuition at a nonpublic school.
In fact, support for ESAs among public school teachers has increased since the same question was asked in the spring.
On behalf of EdChoice, Morning Consult polled 1,034 U.S. K-12 education teachers on a variety of education-related questions, including support for ESAs. Total teacher support came in at 73 percent. Eighty-four percent of private school teachers expressed support and 72 percent of district school teachers. Teachers with three years or less of teaching experience were the most supportive at 84 percent, followed by 79 percent of teachers with four to nine years of experience, 75 percent with 10 to 14 years, and 68 percent with 15 years or more of teaching experience.
The flexibility and customization ESAs offer not only empower students and parents but educators as well.
“I think one of the things we forget is that this one-size-fits-all dominant education model stifles teacher creativity and curiosity just as much as it can stifle learner creativity and curiosity,” stated Kerry McDonald, a senior education fellow with the Foundation for Economic Education, during the spring 2024 Twin Cities Education Freedom Showcase.
Top-down mandates and restrictions from state lawmakers and district and school administration can leave teachers feeling like their hands are tied and that they are without autonomy in the classroom.
Teachers, like parents, are realizing “there are other ways of approaching teaching and learning,” added McDonald, and school choice policies allow them access to those alternatives and the greater autonomy and flexibility that often accompany them. School choice policies also allow teachers expanded work opportunities. For example, ESAs can pay for tutoring outside of school hours, which 67 percent of district school teachers are interested in doing, according to the fall 2024 Morning Consult/EdChoice poll.
And if the right school fit isn’t available, teachers “are going off and building it,” McDonald continued. “I would say around 75 percent of [school] founders I have interviewed are former public school teachers, who had been working within the conventional system and grew fed up with the standardization and stagnation of conventional schooling and decided that they could do it better.”
A 2019 national survey of teachers by Harvard’s Education Next found that non-union public school teachers are much more likely to support school choice than their union-member colleagues. “That’s no surprise as teachers’ unions are the strongest lobbyists against expanding educational opportunities for parents,” according to EdChoice. “After all, teachers’ unions run on membership fees from educators who teach in traditional district schools. Families that are empowered to send their children to different schooling options outside of that traditional district system would affect their bottom line.”
As American Experiment has documented for Minnesota, the state’s teachers’ union Education Minnesota has opposed key education reforms since the 1980s, including school choice policies such as tuition tax deductions, open enrollment, charter schools, education tax credits, and tax-credit scholarships.