As part of this day of school choice in Rhode Island — which explains why the State House will be illuminated in yellow, tonight, by the way — the RI Center for Freedom & Prosperity has released a short study of mine giving some sense of the unfulfilled demand for the policy.

The first category of evidence comes from survey data that had already been released.  The upshot is that Rhode Islanders aren’t happy with government-branded schools, support (by significant majorities) various forms of school choice, and would overwhelmingly choose private schools and other non-district options if given the choice.  The new part comes from College Board data concerning students taking the SATs.

The importance of the SAT data is not the test results themselves, although they are telling.  I learned long ago that SAT scores are another area in which supporters of the establishment have developed arguments to wave the obvious away, saying it’s all too complicated to allow for useful conclusions.

Rather, the utility of the data is that the College Board tracks the types of schools that test-takers attend: public, religiously affiliated private, and independent private.  On that count, comparing Rhode Island to all of the states in which enough students take the tests to make the results relevant produces the following results:

Rhode Islanders use private schools more than residents of any other states in the sample except Hawaii and are the greatest users of religiously affiliated private schools by a large margin.  Various considerations are highly suggestive that the explanation is not that we’re particularly religious, but that such schools tend to be a lower-cost alternative for parents who want a choice other than public schools.  They’re a way to provide one’s children with an education at the level of such schools in other states, and producing results well above those of public schools.

Properly construed, Rhode Island’s “education system” isn’t just the network of schools that the government operates, but rather, all of the ways in which Rhode Islanders educate their children.  Parents shouldn’t have to wait for slow reforms (that probably have a political ceiling, anyway) to give their children a shot at the education that they deserve.

Politicians, administrators, and teachers can wait decades to watch trend lines oscillate.  Children only grow up once, and their parents know there are alternatives and will use them if given the opportunity.