Poll: NC black voters support both school choice and public schools

As charter schools and other educational options come under fire from civil rights activists, North Carolina school choice advocates are arguing black parents are more likely to back educational choice programs and more likely to participate in them.

The school choice advocacy group Parents for Educational Freedom in North Carolina is out with a poll showing nearly 60 percent of black parents in the Tarheel State agree that: “School choice gives parents the right to use the tax dollars associated with their child’s education to send them to the public or private school which best serves their needs.”

North Carolina is home to a growing charter school sector, as well as a voucher program that’s expected to serve tens of thousands of students in the coming years.

Darrell Allison, PEFNC’s president, said some 40 percent of the nearly 23,000 Opportunity Scholarship applicants to date are African-American. He said that statistic, coupled with the poll results, suggests that for politicians looking to court black voters, “there is much to be gained and little to be lost” by backing school choice.

The usual caveats with polls released by advocates apply. Still, some of the results are compelling. When it came to priorities for improving public education, a clear majority of poll respondents agreed with this statement: “We should be working to better fund and improve already existing public schools in North Carolina.” And they favored it over other statements endorsing parental choice.

On a press call explaining the results, Allison said there’s no contradiction in those results. On the contrary, he said, they show black voters support public schools and school choice at the same time.

“Clearly voters can support improving public schools and supporting better educational options,” he said. “Parental school choice options are intended to complement our traditional public school system.”

He was joined on the call by Niekietta Grillo, a North Carolina parent who said she enrolled two children in a charter school after looking at performance reports for different schools in her area, and how their test scores broke down by race.

“As an African-American parent, it is imperative for me to put my child in a school where other African-American students are doing well,” she said.