Joe Williams on Milwaukee's voucher results

One of people on this email list wrote the following in response to my recent email extolling Milwaukee's voucher program:

I am concerned about your assumptions about the success of Milwaukee's voucher program.  The political wrangling (as I understand it) is that the private schools are unwilling to subject themselves to testing.  It seems to me that you should be pressing for objective results before you are willing to be so enthusiastic.  The only measure of success you provide is the high school graduation rate.  I have a few questions about that number:  who is included within the graduation rate statistic you provide?  Is it all low-income kids -- with the higher number those kids who used vouchers and the lower number those kids who didn't?  Or is it private versus public schools?

The Milwaukee Journal/Sentinel (which generally supports vouchers) did a story a few years ago which suggested that some of the voucher schools were fabulous and some were awful.  Before supporting its use nationwide, it seems like significantly more information is necessary.  FYI -- I am from Milwaukee and went to Catholic schools.  

I asked the Exec Dir of DFER, Joe Williams, who covered the Milwaukee voucher program for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, to reply (see below).  For those of you really interested in the Milwaukee case study, I've posted the following on my web site:

A) A 7-part series in the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel from 2005: www.tilsonfunds.com/Personal/LessonsfromtheVoucherSchools.pdf

 

B) Two John Tierney Op Eds in the NYT and one WSJ editoria: www.tilsonfunds.com/Personal/Milwaukeearticles.pdf

 

C) A 2-page data sheet: www.tilsonfunds.com/Personal/Milwaukeechoicedata.pdf

 

D) A study on Milwaukee's graduation rate: www.tilsonfunds.com/Personal/MilwaukeeGraduationRateStudy.pdf

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Joe Williams response on Milwaukee's voucher program:

 

The testing issue for Milwaukee has always been a thorny one. And the politics go beyond the individual schools.

 

In the early years of the voucher program, there were two issues sticking out: The Lutheran schools felt strongly that by changing their long-established testing regiment to use the Wisconsin tests, it represented a sort of government intrusion that made participating in the program unappealing. Indeed, in the early years, only a few Lutheran schools accepts students with vouchers. The other issue was coming from the lawyers who were representing the program in court, based on the (mistaken) assumption that it would end up being the case that appeared before the U.S. Supreme Court. From what I recall, they were trying to make sure that the precise wording of the voucher law assured that there was no "excessive entanglement" of church and state.

 

My understanding is that the entanglement issue is no longer a concern, and more Lutheran schools are participating.

 

The other political end of this had to do with the teachers union. In the late 1990's, the voucher side was asking for an in-depth, nonpartisan study to be included in the legislation. But for several budget cycles, the unions fought against it, for reasons that I honestly don't understand. By that, I mean I don't know what the rationale was - not that I am questioning that rationale.

 

When the cap on participation in the voucher program was raised last year, the budget included funding for a longitudinal study. Patrick Wolf, from Georgrtown, is leading that team, along with John Witte from UW. So there will be a more detailed evaluation done soon.

 

My experience with voucher schools was exactly what you suggest: some were great, some were awful. The new voucher law requires schools to be accredited by specific agencies. The argument that parents would instictively choose the best academic institutions for their kids has not proven to be entirely correct.  It turns out that there are all sorts of other reasons (namely safety) that parents in Milwaukee list when selecting schools for their children.

 

The Milwaukee schools are required to do testing, though it doesn't need to be the state exams. (Most are using the state exams, however, from what I was recently told.)

 

But here is where this has always been thorny for me: There is no real agreement over which tests are supposed to be improving for the program to be considered a success? The kids using vouchers? (We know from graduation rates that voucher studwents are faring well.) But I've always thought the scores that should be improving would be the MPS scores, not the voucher scores. This is supposed to be about improving MPS by introducing an exit strategy for low-income families trapped in bad schools. We don't see evidence yet that MPS has drastically improved.