Bluegrass poll says Kentuckians favor open enrollment

...but the headline spins "vouchers and tax credits"

Before we look at the poll, let's do a little thought experiment. Start by answering the following for yourself:

How satisfied are you with the amount of money you pay for health care?
Very satisfied
Somewhat satisfied
Somewhat unsatisfied
Very unsatisfied

Do you believe the quality of health care services has gotten better, gotten worse or stayed about the same over the last few years?
Gotten better
Gotten Worse
Stayed about the same

Do you think patients should have choice in determining where their children receive health care services?
Yes
No
Don't know/No opinion

Medical vouchers are a type of service delivery in which a state issues certificates which allow parents to select the doctor of their choice for their child. Do you feel medical vouchers would be good for Kentucky health care?
Yes
No
Don't know/No Opinion
~
Now, let's think about how the average Kentuckian might have answered these questions. Do you think a substantial percentage of Kentuckians might have responded positively to the idea of the government making it possible for them to choose the best doctors for their children's health care?

I do.

Do you think the average Kentuckian would have stopped to think through the complexities of how such a program might affect, the healthcare system as a whole, the doctors - or other people's children?

I don't. Some folks would...but I suspect most folks would take a couple of seconds, give an answer, and move on.

How much weight would you give such a poll?

For me...not much.

Such is the nature of polling data these days. Many polls make it easy for respondents to be led toward a predetermined conclusion.

And it is the case with a poll done recently by Dr. Larry Caillouet and Kalisa Hauschen for the Bluegrass Institute. The questions above were modeled off the questions used in their "School Choice Survey." (Summary only) That survey formed the basis for an article by BG Communications Director Jim Waters which says:

• The random telephone survey was conducted between March 11 and April 1 from Western Kentucky University, and has a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percent.
• 79 percent of the 493 respondents support the concept of choice.
• Nearly 73 percent said they supported open-enrollment policies, the most of any option polled.
• Nearly 70 percent of respondents favored allowing parents to obtain a tax refund equal to the amount of tuition they might pay to send their child to a school outside their residential school district.
• 64 percent agreed, after receiving a one-sentence description, that "education vouchers would be good for Kentucky education."
• Only 4 percent of respondents were "very familiar" with charter schools, and 65 percent said they were "not familiar" with vouchers.

The results didn't surprise Adam Schaeffer, a policy analyst with the Cato Institute's Center for Educational Freedom either.

"People do like the idea of choice, generally speaking, in most areas of public policies. In education, it's no different," Schaeffer said. "However, most people don't know a whole lot about policy. After all, you can poll people on who the vice president is, and many won't know. It's amazing how little people know off the top of their head about some of these issues."

Waters says, "While Kentucky currently has a form of open enrollment, the option is controlled by local education bureaucrats rather than by parents."

This statement spins like a curveball. School districts are controlled by the local school boards - made up of parents and others elected by the community. Local control. But Waters seems to infer that some distant force - the bureaucracy - is actually in control. Boards fire bureaucrats all the time and they will continue to do so whether it's a local school board or or a charter school board.

Just as with open health care options - school vouchers, tax credits, open enrollment and scholarship tax credit programs are complex. Each choice carries unintended (cynics would say intended) consequences that must be carefully thought through - before implementation.

That's not the kind of insight one can attain through a poll.

There's nothing wrong with opinion polling, per se. But you can't give this kind of opinion poll, built on one sentence descriptions of previously unknown concepts, with undefined terms, much weight.