Visit to Milwaukee and the Milwaukee voucher program

I spent the day in Milwaukee a month or so ago, learning about the nation's oldest voucher program, the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program, which now has 15,435 students in 125 private schools, most of them religious.  I also visited both a religious school, St. Marcus Lutheran School, in which 80% of students receive vouchers, and a charter school, Milwaukee College Prep, that's closely modeled after KIPP.

 

Milwaukee families/students have an abundance of choice, the main elements of which are: 1) within the public school system, there is open enrollment, meaning students can apply to schools in any district with open seats; 2) for low-income families there's the voucher program; and 3) charter schools.

 

The program has been an enormous success: Since the choice program was enacted in 1990, among the public schools (which are supposedly hurt by vouchers and charters), real per pupil spending is up 27% enrollment is up, the dropout rate is way down, test scores are way up, etc.  And while data on the charter students hasn't been collected since 1995, the voucher students' high school graduation rate is 64% vs. 36% for the public schools.  Yet the media continues to report the naysayers party line that "the results are ambiguous."  What's ambiguous about this?!  And similar results have been achieved elsewhere.

 

One of the people on my email list recently emailed me saying that he opposed vouchers because they hurt the students left behind and that "America does not need two parallel school systems."  Here was my reply:

I disagree with your assertion that vouchers hurt the students left behind -- in fact, the data shows that even the students left behind BENEFIT (see the chapter, attached, from Jay Greene's book addressing this ("The Draining Myth")).  I also disagree that "America does not need two parallel school systems."  We have the most successful system of higher ed in the world (in marked contrast to our K-12 public system), in which there are THREE systems: religious schools like Georgetown and Notre Dame, private schools like Harvard and public schools like Berkeley.  The system is successful precisely BECAUSE there are competing systems and alternatives, BECAUSE students and their parents can choose which option is best, and BECAUSE failing institutions will generally be shut down, go out of business, or at the very least those responsible for the failure will be replaced.

As I've said before, I don't think vouchers are a magic bullet, but I think a properly structured choice program can be an important tool in the broad struggle to improve education.