Progressive teachers vs conservative families: School choice can help level the playing field
Fox News
There is a growing disconnect between the values and priorities of America’s public education system and the families that system is supposed to serve. Rural Texas is a good example.
Jay P. Greene is a senior research fellow in the Center for Education Policy at the Heritage Foundation.
To document this disconnect, we examined the political preferences of public schools employees who reside in rural zip codes in Texas compared to the preferences of voters in those areas. We collected information from the website OpenSecrets.com on the political campaign contributions of everyone who listed an "ISD" (or Independent School District) as their employer and had an address in a zip code with a population density of fewer than 500 people per square mile, a criterion for classifying areas as rural.
Of the more than 1,400 campaign contributions made by public school employees in rural Texas during the last election cycle, 90.2% of them went to support Democratic candidates. By contrast, the Republican candidate for governor, Greg Abbott, won re-election with 80.7% of the two-party vote in rural counties. Rural Texans and the educators who teach their kids in public schools clearly view the world very differently.