Tag Archives | Milwaukee Parental Choice Program

It’s time to move beyond old assumptions about vouchers

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On January 12, 2012 in Education and Public Policy, General, School Choice

School voucher critics generally approach their job reviewing the research on school choice with unfair assumptions, and otherwise insightful commentators risk recycling old canards. This is true with Thomas Toch’s critique of vouchers in the newest edition of Kappan, which concludes that voucher programs haven’t shown enough impact to justify their position in a large-scale reform effort. Questions of scale can lead to legitimate debate, but we’ll get nowhere until we acknowledge what’s in the literature.

Toch grounds what he calls “the underwhelming record of voucher schools” first with an anecdotal report in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, which determined that America’s first voucher program “is very much like a teenager: heart-warmingly good at times, disturbingly bad at others.” The problem is that this newspaper report is nearly seven years old. We’ve learned so much since then, and at no time has the peer-reviewed science on the subject shown the back-and-forth swing from good to bad that the Journal Sentinel implied in 2005.

John Witte and Patrick Wolf, for instance, gave us a glimpse this year into their evaluation of the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program. Among other findings, they conclude that the competitive pressure from the voucher program produced modest achievement gains in the school district, and that the gains of the low-income choice students were comparable to a low-income sample in the school district. Notably, they also found that high school students in the choice program enroll in four-year colleges at a higher rate than do students in Milwaukee Public Schools, a factor that Toch dispatches with a rhetorical afterthought.

And if “comparable” gains between voucher and public school students are insufficient to Toch, he need only turn to more recent evidence from Northwestern University’s David Figlio, who annually studies the academic impact of the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship program and wrote last summer that scholarship students had modestly better gains in reading and math than similar low-income students in public schools. “The estimated effects of program participation on math performance are statistically significantly positive at conventional levels … and the estimated effects on reading performance are significantly positive in the case of reading,” Figlio said. “These differences, while not large in magnitude, are larger and more statistically significant than in the past year’s results, suggesting that successive cohorts of participating students may be gaining ground over time.”

Critiques like Toch’s have been applied carelessly by others to charter schools and other choice initiatives as well, but Toch is correct to point out that public school choice has evolved to grow more accountable to taxpayers in a way that most voucher programs have not. But this, too, ignores more recent developments that would make private school options more transparent. Toch notes that Indiana has established a sweeping new program that will significantly increase the size of the nation’s voucher population, but he doesn’t mention that voucher students will be subject to the same state testing regimen as public school students. And next summer we’ll see the learning gains of Florida Tax Credit Scholarship students according to each participating school in which there are 30 qualifying scholarship student test scores.

The picture is far from perfect, but the lessons we’re learning year by year should help inform states to develop well-regulated private school options that help us find common ground on issues of accountability, quality and scale. Toch’s commentary may have succeeded in shedding more light on the lingering political divide on parental choice, but it also seems more relevant with debates that took place years ago.  Vouchers and tax credit scholarships in Florida, Milwaukee and elsewhere are now well established in systems of public education that defy traditional notions of “public” and “private.” Enrollment in the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship has grown by nearly 61 percent in just the last three years, and 95 percent of all scholarship parents rate their school as “good” or “excellent.” It’s time to graduate to a new conversation about choice where we leave old fears behind.

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A new strategy?

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On July 20, 2011 in Education and Public Policy, General, Private Schools, School Choice

This week, the Denver-based Legal Center for People with Disabilities and Older People filed a federal complaint alleging that a Colorado school district’s pilot voucher plan discriminates against children with special needs. The voucher program would provide “only limited services (if any) for students with disabilities” and violates not only the Americans with Disabilities Act, but also Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act protecting civil rights law, reads the complaint to the Justice Department. “Parents of students with disabilities do not have the same choice to participate in this program,” the center states.

This, of course, comes just a month after the American Civil Liberties Union filed a similar complaint to the Justice Department alleging that the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program, and two schools in particular, also violate both ADA and Section 504 by discriminating against students with disabilities and further segregating Milwaukee students. “Proposed legislation to substantially expand the voucher program, if implemented, will exacerbate the discrimination against and segregation of students with disabilities by permitting more schools to participate in the program,” the ACLU states.

The Milwaukee program did indeed expand to Racine, Wis., just as many private school options passed state legislatures during the past several months. Will we be seeing more complaints like these as one strategy to reverse the momentum?

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Legislative update: Milwaukee voucher expansion clears Assembly

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On June 16, 2011 in Education and Public Policy, General, Parental Choice, School Choice

The Wisconsin Assembly passed Gov. Scott Walker’s state budget early today, which would expand the City of Milwaukee’s school voucher program to schools in Milwaukee County and in Racine. Despite a plan to bring the choice program to Green Bay, The Associated Press reported that Republican leaders failed to generate enough support in the face of strong opposition from Green Bay school leaders.

The budget bill passed along party lines, with no Democrats voting in support. The Senate will take up the measure later today.

The Milwaukee Parental Choice Program, the oldest school voucher program in the nation, currently serves about 21,000 students at 102 private schools in the city.

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Fuller: Milwaukee choice program should expand to other Wisconsin cities

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On May 31, 2011 in Education and Public Policy, General, Parental Choice, School Choice

Civil rights and school choice champion Howard Fuller today released a statement through the American Federation for Children supporting a proposal to expand the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program to other cities in Wisconsin.

In recent weeks, Fuller has reacted strongly against a plan from Gov. Scott Walker to eliminate the income threshold that regulates entry to the voucher program, but he called Walker’s plan to expand the program to other cities one that gives poor and working-class families the education options they deserve.

His full statement reads as follows:

I believe that poor and working class families deserve to have options that allow them to seek better educational opportunities for their children. Programs like the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program are one of those options. I would strongly support any efforts by parents, elected representatives and concerned citizens from other cities in Wisconsin such as Green Bay and Racine to establish such a program in their communities. I recognize that both Racine and Green Bay have some good public schools but not every child has access to them. I want every child in these two communities to be able to go to a high quality school that will transform their lives whether that school is public or private.

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A defense of Scott Walker and universal choice from an unlikely source

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On May 2, 2011 in Education and Public Policy, General, Parental Choice, School Choice

In today’s Wall Street Journal, John O. Norquist, a former Democratic mayor of Milwaukee, defends an effort from Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker to eliminate the income threshold regulating entry to the Milwaukee voucher program, which currently is open only to low-income students. The threshold has had the effect, Norquist writes, “of isolating low-income students from other more affluent students.” By contrast, most Western nations have a much greater enhanced form of parental school choice, and their urban centers are economically and racially diverse as a result.

People with children and money don’t cluster outside European or Canadian cities to avoid sending their kids to school with the poor. And the poor who live in cities have the opportunity to attend public, private and parochial schools that are appreciated by a large cross section of parents.

American liberals have been reluctant to embrace school choice, fearing it will drain resources from government-operated schools. Yet isn’t it even worse to support a system that rewards concentration of the rich in exclusive suburbs segregated from the poor? Of course there are affluent people (Bill Clinton and Barack Obama come to mind) who enroll their children in urban private schools like D.C.’s Sidwell Friends, which still has some children enrolled from the choice program. Many more, including middle-class parents, would live in economically and racially diverse cities once school choice was universally available.

If expanded, Milwaukee’s choice program will demonstrate this to the whole country.

Opposition to Walker’s plan to expand the program has come in recent weeks from a stalwart defender of the school choice movement, Howard Fuller. While Fuller has supported raising the income limit of the Milwaukee voucher to include more moderate-income people, he said making the program universally accessible to students in all income levels “essentially provides a subsidy for rich people.”

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Black, Hispanic legislators urge caution in expanding Milwaukee voucher

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On April 26, 2011 in Education and Public Policy, General, Parental Choice, School Choice

Members of the Wisconsin Legislature’s Black and Latino Caucus wrote Gov. Scott Walker and legislative leaders recently expressing concern that “outside forces and ideology will dominate this discussion” over the proposed expansion of the Milwaukee voucher program. In particular, the members have called for maintaining the accountability standards governing the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program put in place two years ago as well as maintaining the income limits. Gov. Walker has called for eliminating the income threshold, which currently limits eligibility to those students who come from households at 175 percent of poverty. Not long before the Black and Latino Caucus sent the letter, longtime choice champion Howard Fuller told the Legislature’s Joint Finance Committee that he would oppose any program that “essentially provides a subsidy for rich people.”

Just as Fuller has done, the legislators recommended aligning the income threshold of the voucher program with the BadgerCare initiative in Wisconsin, which provides health care to state residents who earn less than 300 percent of poverty. “It is common sense that the level of poverty that qualifies a family for healthcare should be the same as that which qualifies a family for the choice program, always intended to be for low-income persons,” the legislators wrote.

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Of choice, and quality choices

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On April 21, 2011 in Education and Public Policy, General, Parental Choice, School Choice

Much of our podcast this week with Howard Fuller explored statements Fuller made recently admonishing Wisconsin’s governor and legislature for plans to eliminate the income requirements for entry into the Milwaukee voucher program, but another point in our talk highlighted his thoughts on the acacemic achievement of students in the program, and what it means.

Results from a comparative assessment between students in the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program and those in the school district showed that students receiving vouchers performed no better than their peers in traditional public schools. That has led to the responses one might expect among voucher critics, such as Diane Ravitch, but Fuller, the founder of the Black Alliance for Educational Options, explains why it’s unfair to dismiss the entire enterprise:

There are two elements to choice. One is choice. There is a power to having choice. So when people say students don’t do any better, the issue is do you now therefore want to deny parents the option of being able to go to schools that do do better. Because not all of the schools did not do better. Some of them did much better. And the real purpose of choice is to give people who have not previously had options the ability to choose.

Now the second thing we have to work on is to improve the schools that they will have the choice to attend. Because a voucher is not a school. It’s a mechanism. It’s a funding mechanism to get people to a school. And because we have not yet turned a corner where all of the schools that peple are attending are better. That is not a reason to deny parents the power to choose. Because, if that’s the case, then you should shut down the whole traditional public school system, because vast numbers of those schools are not serving people well at all.

… The second point I would make is, it’s incumbent upon all of us, then, to support freedom to choose, to fight for quality. Because freedom is illusionary if you don’t have the ability to choose from something other than mediocrity.

… The third point is, we’re doing almost as well with half the money. One of the things people got to understand is, if I’m trying to make a school work, and I’ve only got $6,500 per kid, and you got a school making $13,000, with all due respect, money does matter. Because there’s never been equity in funding, it’s very difficult to make an argument that someone getting half the money should do as well as someone getting double what you’re getting.

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Howard Fuller — podcastED

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On April 18, 2011 in Education and Public Policy, General, Parental Choice, School Choice

The school choice movement could be heading toward a critical juncture for one of its biggest champions. Last week, Howard Fuller made clear his distaste for Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s attempt to remove the income restrictions to the Milwaukee voucher program, and he says in this redefinED podcast that he’ll offer no support to efforts in other states that fail to means-test their own voucher or tax-credit plans.

“I will continue to fight for vouchers, tax credit scholarships, opportunity scholarship programs, charter schools, home schools, virtual schools — anything that empowers low-income and working-class people to be able to have some of the capacity to choose what those of us with money have,” said Fuller, the former superintendent of Milwaukee Public Schools and founder of the Black Alliance for Educational Options. “I will never fight for giving people who already have means more resources. Because, in the end, that will disadvantage and squeeze out the possibility of poor parents having some of these options.”

This is not to say that Fuller won’t consider raising the income threshold to serve more of Milwaukee’s working poor. In the interview, he talks about aligning the requirements for entry into the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program with those of Wisconsin’s BadgerCare program, which provides health care to state residents who earn less than 300 percent of poverty. “That would capture over 80 percent of the households in the city,” he said. “So if your real objective is to expand the level of support, you could do that and still retain a focus on low-income and moderate-income families.”

But if Wisconsin and other states want to make their vouchers universally accessible to families of any income level, “it may very well be that it’s time for people like me to get off the stage,” he said. “Maybe it has to be a different movement going forward, but if that’s the way the movement has to be going forward, it’s not something that I can be a part of.”

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

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Fuller: Milwaukee voucher can serve more without going universal

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On April 15, 2011 in Education and Public Policy, General, Parental Choice, School Choice

Howard Fuller will never support a universally accessible voucher, and he will oppose any effort to lift all income restrictions to the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program. But that doesn’t mean he won’t consider reviewing the elibility requirements that have been in place since Wisconsin established the voucher program more than 20 years ago.

In an interview today with redefinED, Fuller said there is a way to expand the program to serve more Milwaukee students while remaining faithful to the cause for social justice that inspired the program in the first place. Currently, families new to the program can earn a household income no greater than 175 percent of the federal poverty level, which for a family of four totals $38,937. Yet, as Fuller notes, the median household income in Milwaukee is $34,898. Gov. Scott Walker can capture more low-income and working-class families by following other means-tested models proven in other public services without establishing a universal voucher, which Fuller says would ultimately subisdize the wealthy.

As an example, he pointed to Wisconsin’s BadgerCare program, which provides health care to state residents who earn less than 300 percent of poverty, which is about $67,000 for a family of four. “That would capture over 80 percent of the households in the city,” Fuller said. “So if your real objective is to expand the level of support, you could do that, and still retain a focus on low-income and moderate-income families.”

Earlier this week, Fuller told legislators that if they passed Walker’s plan to eliminate the income threshold, “I will become an opponent of a program that I have fought for over 20 years.” On Monday, redefinED will feature a podcast of the interview with Fuller, who also shares why choice without regulation or accountability is not enough and why he thinks the school choice movement nationally could be coming to a critical juncture for him.

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Fuller: I will oppose a subsidy for rich people

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On April 13, 2011 in Education and Public Policy, General, Parental Choice, School Choice

Yesterday, we highlighted Howard Fuller’s alarm over Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s proposal to eliminate the income threshold for entry into the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program. The Black Alliance for Educational Options now has posted Fuller’s comments to the Wisconsin legislative Joint Finance Committee, to which Fuller closed by saying:

I am a person who has taken blows for years from people who have said this program for some has never been about poor people. They warned that once the program got established the real agenda would surface, which is to get money for rich people. I have never believed and do not believe now that many people who have fought for the program over the years had this as their purpose. But, this is exactly what this provision does. I want everyone to understand that if this provision becomes law, I will become an opponent of a program that I have fought for over 20 years. I will never support a program that essentially provides a subsidy for rich people.

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