WYSIWYG or WSYIWYWS? 
By Martin Harris

Acronyms are typically considered a relatively modern etymological innovation  --RADAR, for example, (RAdio Detection And Ranging) was invented in 1941-- but linguistics experts consider the use of first letters or first syllables in lieu of the whole word or phrase to be a lot older. They point to "alphabet", which was invented as a derivation from the names of the first two Greek letters in the BCE (not a real acronym, because it can’t be pronounced) centuries. The better acronyms have a touch of humor to them; thus, there’s YUPpie, for Young Urban Professional, MAEPie for Middle-Aged Exurban Professional, or DINK households (Double Income No Kids). There’s NIMBY for Not In My Back Yard and BANANA for Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anything, both descriptive of attitudes frequently displayed by the above Yuppies, Maepie’s, and Dinks. In the modern world of computing, WYSIWG was briefly popular as a short-cut for What You See Is What You Get, also known as the "print-screen" command. And in the equally modern world of  opinion-polling, there ought to be  WYSIWYWS, for What You See Is What You Wanna See. Case in point, the recently-released results of a survey asking for opinion from a Vermont population sample on various aspects of education.

Economist Milton Friedman and spouse Rose set up the –what else?—Friedman Foundation for the study of education, primarily the public system, and primarily with a pro-school-choice focus, and it, together with local school-focussed Vermonters for Better Education,  commissioned a modest study (1200 respondents) by  Atlanta-based polling outfit Strategic Vision.  A VBE press release neatly spans the thus-revealed opinion divide between those who think Vermont’s K-12 system is remarkably superior to any parallel efforts elsewhere in time or space, and those who think it isn’t:  "A plurality of Vermonters believe their public schools are "good or excellent", but nearly nine out of ten would send their children to private, charter, or virtual schools, or educate them in a home setting". But then here are the actual numbers for citizen/parent/taxpayer responses to the "if you could select any type of school, what type of school would you select in order to obtain the best education for your child?" question:

Private school        44% (church or secular)
Charter school        26% (public but with extra management discretion)
Public                    11% (public with the standard K-12 objectives)
Virtual                      2% (on-line to students at home or in classrooms) 

Note that responses which prefer other-than-standard-public-schools add to 72%.

Another part of the survey finds that 44% rated the public schools as "good or excellent", 41% as "fair or poor", and 15% "undecided". A theoretical tie, when you consider the 3% m.o.e.

Under the principle of WYSIWYWS, you can choose to find in the 44% plurality a basis for the "…Vermonters believe their public schools are good or excellent…" line, but you can also find something else: a fairly substantial level of discontent –not so much, any more, with cost, from which a clear majority of property-taxpaying home-owners has now been seemingly insulated by the income-sensitivity provisions of Acts 60 and 68—but with actual academic-achievement results. In politics, 72% is a landslide majority, and that’s the percentage of respondents who’d prefer to spend their school-tax money elsewhere than in their typical neighborhood public school. And, when you look at the answers to the "if you could select any school…" questions, you face an 11% public-school preference versus a 72% anything-but-public preference even before you apply your WYSIWYWS view-finders. That’s a percentage usually described as marginal versus a percentage usually described as overwhelming.

I suspect, but can’t prove, that the 44% who find the public schools "good or excellent" is made up to large extent of those who are old enough that they personally recall better days in public education, or who have achieved empty-nester status –no kids in school any more-- and those who have school-age kids but pay extra to send them elsewhere. The latter group includes, to a fraction about twice that of the overall population, public school teachers and administrators who know first-hand, as some poll-analysts don’t, that WYSIWYG actually trumps WYSIWYWS in real life, in their own classrooms from which they feel compelled, and can afford, to spend quite a lot, over and above school taxes, to keep their own kids safely distant.

Martin Harris is a former Chairman of Citizens for Property Rights