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parental choice

Commentary and OpinionEducation and Public PolicyEducation ChoiceEducation ReportingFeaturedParental ChoiceSchool Choice

No, school choice won’t decimate your public schools

Ron Matus
Ron Matus

The next time school choice opponents claim the apocalypse is coming to public schools in your state – and there’s a whole new round of that in the wake of pandemic pods – point them to Florida.

Education choice in the Sunshine State isn’t some fearmonger’s abstraction, and the story line here is a rising tide, not a falling sky. Over the past quarter-century, Florida has expanded choice as much as any state in America. And over that span, Florida’s education system has morphed from punchline to pacesetter, with its public schools posting their best academic outcomes ever.

Read more over at The Hill.

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CustomizationEducation ChoiceFaith-based EducationFeaturedFlorida Tax Credit ScholarshipNewsParental ChoicePrivate School ScholarshipsPrivate SchoolsSchool Choice

Influx of new families from out of state a boon to Jewish schools in Florida

Lisa Buie
Lisa Buie

Hebrew Academy Community School began the 2020-21 school at near maximum capacity thanks to an influx of 60 new families, many from out of state.

At Hebrew Academy Community School in the North Broward County city of Margate, students in early childhood classes are learning about germs by spreading glitter glue on their hands and washing it away. In the upper grades, socially distanced students wearing masks are watching out for each other’s health. Meanwhile, school staff members are welcoming new families with care packages of challah bread and wine for the Sabbath.

A recent post on the academy’s Facebook page to launch the 2020-21 year is evidence of a new excitement at the Early Childhood-Grade 8 Jewish school founded in 1987: “From Los Angeles to Crown Heights and beyond, we are thrilled to have so many fresh faces to greet each day!”

Hebrew Academy has good reason to be thrilled. Originally serving four early childhood youngsters in the living room of a young Jewish couple, the school now boasts a 32,500-square-foot main building and a 5,000-square-foot state-of-the-art gymnasium. More than 375 children are enrolled this year, each one benefiting from school leaders’ belief that all Jewish children should have access to Torah learning.

“We’re pretty much at maximum capacity,” said development director Rabbi Shloime Denburg, who enrolled 60 new students this year. “We’re seeing a lot of families from New York and New Jersey. For the first time, we’re also getting calls from California.”

This influx of interest from Jewish families outside of Florida isn’t limited to Hebrew Academy Community School. Even as enrollment plummets at other private schools across the state, Jewish schools are experiencing massive growth, according to Mimi Jankovits, executive director for Teach Florida, part of the national Teach Coalition advocacy organization for Jewish schools.

Jankovits cites a variety of reasons for the expansion: a lower cost of living, less crowding, a better climate. Not to mention the wide variety of Jewish schools available and the fact many participate in the state’s K-12 scholarship program.

“Whatever your philosophy is, there’s probably a school for you here,” Jankovits said, adding that even if some families don’t need the financial assistance state scholarships offer, it’s reassuring to families to know Florida is friendly to school choice.

“We are excited Florida can offer people moving here these opportunities to get scholarships if they need them,” she said.

Brauser Maimonides Academy in Fort Lauderdale started the school year with about 70 new students.

“That’s the most we’ve ever brought in,” said Eli Hagler, executive director of the Modern Orthodox school. In just five years, Hagler said, school enrollment has increased from 350 to 550 students.

A lot of those families have migrated to South Florida from outside the state.

“I’ve spoken to a lot of people from New York and New Jersey. Companies are going virtual and staying virtual, and so people are looking to get out,” he said.

Like Jankovits, Hagler pointed to lower living costs and scholarship opportunities as magnets drawing Jewish families to Florida. He also praised new legislation that allows more families to qualify and no longer requires them to reapply each year for the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship, a program administered by Step Up For Students, which hosts this blog.

“We don’t view private Jewish day school as a choice,” Hagler said. “It’s a necessity.”

Annual tuition at Brauser Maimonides ranges from $9,475 for 2-year-old nursery students to $18,780 for middle school students. That’s significantly lower than tuition at a Jewish day school in New York, which can cost $30,000 per year.

Student enrollment also is up at Hebrew Academy in Miami, a surprise for school leaders who had expected to see enrollment drop due to COVID-19. But more than 70 new families replaced those who decided not to re-enroll.

“All of a sudden we had these New York families,” said dean of admission Ami Eskanos. “They started referring their friends. One of our alums transplanted back down here, and she started showing homes to all of these New Yorkers coming down, and they started referring people. They just kept referring one another.”

Although most Jewish families are relocating to South Florida, other parts of the state also are experiencing an influx of new residents from the Northeast eager to find seats for their children in Jewish schools.

“We started 10 years ago with 12 kids and are almost at 110 this year,” said Rabbi Avraham Wachsman, dean at Orlando Torah Academy, a Jewish preschool and day school serving Orlando and Greater Central Florida.

Wachsman recently has received inquiries from families in New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania.

“You hear so much about shrinking schools, but we have the opposite,” he said.

Quality of life and lower tuition are among the main factors that are driving relocation, Wachsman said. Along with one additional benefit.

“I’m from Milwaukee,” he said. “I’ve done my 30 years’ time in the snow.”

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AnalysisBlog GuestCustomizationDemographic ResearchEducation and Public PolicyEducation ChoiceEducation EquityEducation ResearchFeaturedParental ChoicePatrick J. WolfPrivate School ScholarshipsSchool Choice

Choosing the right path: evidence that Milwaukee’s school choice program excels beyond academics

Patrick J. Wolf
Patrick J. Wolf

One of the largest and oldest Lutheran high schools in the nation, Milwaukee Lutheran High School participates in the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program, allowing families who meet the household income requirements to attend at no charge or for significantly reduced tuition.

America’s oldest urban private school choice program has the vital effects of steering young adults away from both crime and out-of-wedlock births, thus laying a strong foundation for them to live more successful lives.

What predicts future life success for young adults from disadvantaged backgrounds? Two vital factors are avoiding a criminal record (see here and here) and an out-of-wedlock birth.

That reality might be one reason why private schools often describe their mission as educating the “whole child,” mind, body and soul. Education should shape the character of students in positive ways. Strong character traits, such as conscientiousness and self-restraint, are especially important for youth growing up in challenged family circumstances. They rarely get second chances.

Given that avoiding a criminal record and refraining from causing a non-marital birth are keys to life success, and private schools may have advantages over public schools in promoting the character traits of their charges, it is shocking that almost no research has been conducted on the effects of private school choice programs on rates of crime and out-of-wedlock births.

Corey A. DeAngelis, director of school choice at the Reason Foundation, and I have set out to fill that gaping hole in our understanding of the potential long-term, life-changing effects of school choice.

Our first foray examined the medium-term effects of the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program (MPCP) on the likelihood of a person being charged with a crime by age 22-25. The MPCP is restricted to low-income families in Milwaukee. We matched more than 1,000 eighth- and ninth-grade students in the MPCP in 2006 with Milwaukee public schools (MPS) students in the same grade, with the same race, gender, English Language Learner status, and similar initial achievement test scores.

Importantly, we also matched the MPCP students with peers from their own neighborhood. Family values and behavioral expectations tend to be similar in urban neighborhoods, so matching students based on where they lived likely helped us control for vital unmeasured factors.

We then searched the public database of all criminal records for the state of Wisconsin as of fall 2015. The searchers were not aware if a given student was in the MPCP group or the MPS group when they looked to see if that study participant had committed a crime in the state. We found that MPCP students who remained in their private school of choice throughout their high school years were significantly less likely to have committed a crime during young adulthood, compared to their matched peers in MPS.

When MPCP students who switched from their private high school to a public school were included in the analysis, however, the effect of the MPCP on reducing crime became less clear. We concluded that students may need a steady “dose” of the character education treatment of private schooling for it to change their life trajectory.

Our initial study was published last year in the peer-reviewed journal Social Science Quarterly.

This year, we returned to the question with more and better data. We also employed more conservative analytic methods, to be even more confident that the selectivity of MPCP students was not biasing our results. In a study published in the peer-reviewed Journal of Private Enterprise, we revisited the same set of MPCP and matched MPS students three years later, when they were 25-28 years old. The additional three years gave the MPCP students more time to distinguish themselves from their MPS peers regarding avoiding criminal behavior.

We also found data on paternity suits in Wisconsin and added that key outcome variable to our study. Finally, we did not separate out students who stayed in the MPCP for their entire high school career from those who switched back to MPS. Thus, we conservatively tested to see if experiencing the private school choice program for any length of time from eighth to twelfth grade affected crime outcomes or non-marital birth rates. In these three ways, our recent study improved upon our original one.

We found that participating in the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program reduced the likelihood of a young adult having a drug conviction by 53%. The MPCP also decreased the chances of a person having a conviction for a property damage crime by an astounding 86%. MPCP alums were 38% less likely than their matched MPS peers to have been named in a paternity suit by age 25-28.

The positive effects of the private school choice program on reducing criminality were larger for males, who commit most crimes, and for participants with lower initial achievement test scores. The benefit of the MPCP in reducing the likelihood of causing a non-marital birth was similar for both males and females, since it takes two to tango.

Our research was not designed to reveal what the private schools in the MPCP did to generate these reductions in crime and out-of-wedlock births. Religion, re-enforcing parental values, and the influence of better-behaved peers all may have played a role. Future research should continue to study those questions.

For now, we can say that America’s oldest urban private school choice program had the vital effects of steering young adults away from both crime and out-of-wedlock births, thus laying a strong foundation for them to live more successful lives.

That’s a big deal.

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Blog GuestCommentary and OpinionCommon GroundEducation ChoiceEducation EquityFeaturedJack CoonsParental ChoiceSchool ChoiceUnionism

Why bully the low-income parent?

John E. Coons
John E. Coons

The rulers of our teacher unions and those of allied non-teaching school staff need at long last identify and explain the justification for their forcing un-monied parents to deliver 5-year-old Mary to P.S. 99 instead of that private, maybe religious, school they preferred but could not afford.

The cost of choice to the taxpayer would not have increased the budget; indeed, a substantial and sufficient parental subsidy can be designed to save public money if that be a civic objective. Religious schools tend to be less expensive anyway.

So, what is the problem? Do we have reason to fear that private schools are bad for inner-city kids? So far at least, test scores suggest the contrary.

And what then does our no-choice military-style draft of the poor for their own “neighborhood” government school gain for either the child or society?

The union sovereigns softly encourage a justification with a more subtle assumption about poor parents. It is one seldom addressed in public or even casual private conversation; yet, from my own experience, it is widely shared by educated middle-class minds, even if seldom uttered in direct conversation.

It is simply the observation of the poor parent as somehow diminished either intellectually, morally, or both. In either case, they are in want of a certain something that only the Hoover public school just down the street can provide.

In short, these parents are viewed as dodos or even bad actors; clearly, that Hoover place is this child’s and society’s single best hope.

Meanwhile, we middle-class folk are sufficiently bright and sophisticated that we are the best judge of just who will serve our own child’s and the state’s interest (and then there is Pierce v. Society of Sisters).

This vague assumption of an incapacity of the low-income parent (combined with unique government insight of this child’s needs) endures today in the unspoken mystique supporting our public school conscription for the children of these impaired city-dwellers. It may constitute a gross defamation of the slum parent, but it continues as one of those subtle diseases of our cultural and civic souls.

It is difficult to recognize its presence and influence in oneself because so often it remains “in the air” but unspoken – an assumption of the true citizen but seldom allowed to emerge as a conscious and express working datum. In the real world, it remains a subtle constant that makes it easier to close our civic eye to the plague we have wrought upon the parent and child of the inner city.

Finally, suppose it to be true that such limited capacity to choose were in fact an authentic characteristic of the poor. We would still have to ask our leaders: Why is it that among all accessible schools, private and public, this one local public school knows best how to maximize the potential of this particular child whom no one of the school folk has even met?

The entire concept is an absurd non-sequitur. The perpetuation of this system of educational strong-arm is strictly a political achievement empowering the teacher unions. It is a uniquely destructive contraption built upon a foundation laid in the 19th century and prospering since.

Truly, it can claim no justification whatsoever for monopolizing education service to the minds of the poor family, its child, or our civic order.

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Coronavirus / COVID-19Course ChoiceCustomizationEducation ChoiceFeaturedNewsParental ChoiceSchool ChoiceTechnology and InnovationVirtual Education

COVID-19 sparks virtual school growth in Florida, elsewhere

redefinED staff
redefinED staff

Online learning providers nationwide are enjoying unprecedented enrollment increases as families seek more education choice for their children amid the coronavirus pandemic, according to a story published today in Education Week.

Virtual school providers cite a variety of reasons for the success they experienced even before COVID-19: comprehensive learning management systems, experienced teachers, and an emphasis on live teaching.

An additional reason for their success at this particular time, according to EdWeek, is longevity. The article points to Florida Virtual School, the nation’s first statewide online public school, as an example. Founded in 1997, FLVS’ enrollment is up 54% year over year for its individual online course offerings and 64% for full-time programs.

The creative vision of founding president Julie Young and her team, who grew FLVS from an Internet high school with 77 enrollments, has grown into a diversified, worldwide organization serving more than 2 million students in 50 states and more than 100 countries worldwide. Today, FLVS offers more than 190 courses, from core subjects such as English and algebra to electives such as guitar and photography. Available to both full- and part-time students, FLVS welcomes students from public, private, charter and homeschool backgrounds.

Like other virtual providers, FLVS ramped up to meet expected demand, hiring 320 new instructors and upgrading its servers over the summer. The expansion was made possible following Florida Board of Education approval in April of FLVS’ request to spend $4.3 million to boost capacity.

You can read the full Education Week story here.

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Catholic SchoolsCoronavirus / COVID-19Course ChoiceEducation ChoiceFaith-based EducationFeaturedFlorida Tax Credit ScholarshipNewsParental ChoicePrivate SchoolsSchool ChoiceTechnology and Innovation

Catholic virtual school offers options to families seeking online faith-based education

Lisa Buie
Lisa Buie

Archdiocese of Miami Catholic Virtual School curriculum includes core subjects including reading language arts and math, religion and theology, Advanced Placement and dual enrollment courses as well as electives.

When Susana Moro was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia nearly four years ago, a faith-based virtual school in South Florida allowed her daughter to stay home with her mom while keeping up with her schoolwork.

“She felt very comfortable and loved the classes,” said Moro, who underwent a successful bone marrow transplant and is now healthy. Her daughter, who had been a sophomore at Immaculata-LaSalle High School, did so well at Archdiocese of Miami Catholic Virtual School that she opted to stay and graduate, Moro said.

Since then, Moro’s younger daughter enrolled in the Catholic virtual school as an eighth grader to take a high-school level Spanish class.

And now, during the coronavirus pandemic, the school is helping families in Florida and beyond who want an online Catholic education for their children, although school leaders stress their goal is to complement in-person Catholic schools rather than compete with them.

“We expect most of these students to return to their brick and mortar schools,” principal Rebeca Bautista said. 

Founded in 2013 when it served only a handful of students, the Catholic virtual school was created to support traditional Catholic schools by allowing high school students to take courses that were not available on campus, get remedial instruction and bank extra credits, as well as serve those whose participation in sports or other activities required frequent travel.

Earlier this year, the school added kindergarten through fifth grade, bringing its enrollment this year to about 800. Most students attend part time.

“Our mission is to ensure that Catholic education is not only on the cutting edge but setting the pace and establishing new educational models to inspire students to maximize their God-given gifts resulting in transformation,” Thomas Wenski, Archbishop of Miami, wrote in an announcement letter to families when the school opened. The letter stressed it was important that “all Catholic schools keep pace with the demands of the 21sth century.”

The Catholic virtual school is fully accredited by the global non-profit accreditation organization Cognia and uses only teachers who are certified to work in Catholic schools. Powered by Florida Virtual School, the state’s 23-year-old online public school, it has infused Florida Virtual School content with Catholic faith and values perspectives, such as prayers before classes and references to God and church teachings. The virtual platform also includes theology courses that school leaders developed from scratch.

“We have ability to edit the content and enrich it,” said Marcey Ayers, director of special programs in the Office of Catholic Schools for the Archdiocese of Miami. “They know that it’s a Catholic course they are taking.”

Like other virtual schools across the country, Archdiocese of Miami Catholic Virtual School has received more attention as families flocked to online education after COVID-19 forced campus shutdowns. Over the summer, the school got 10 to 12 calls a day from families seeking options. As the pandemic continued into August, the Catholic virtual school stepped up for traditional Catholic schools.

It offered them the use of their courses, taught by fully certified Archdiocese of Miami Catholic Virtual School teachers, as an online option for students not ready to return in person. It also offered its online curriculum to traditional schools’ faculty so they could deliver customized online lessons.

“Being able to offer this virtual school was really a blessing to us,” said Todd Orlando, principal of Bishop Kenny Catholic High School in Jacksonville. The school pivoted to distance learning in the spring, but when it became apparent the pandemic would continue into the new school year, leaders decided it would be more efficient to let a virtual school handle the virtual option than to require its faculty to teach both formats simultaneously.

“We are a brick-and-mortar school. We are not a virtual school,” Orlando said. “These people know what they’re doing.”

He added that school leaders also were attracted to the fact that Archdiocese of Miami Catholic Virtual School courses reflect the church’s teachings.

“We wanted a Catholic option for our families,” he said. “We realized their curriculum mirrored ours in each and every way. It’s been a positive and smooth transition for us.”

Of the 1,264 students enrolled this year at Bishop Kenny, 44 chose the virtual option.

Families with students who receive state scholarships including the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship can take classes through the Catholic virtual school during the pandemic as long as they are enrolled in a brick-and-mortar Catholic school, thanks to the waiving of a state rule that had required scholarship recipients to be taught primarily in person.

(Step Up For Students, which hosts this blog, is the state’s largest administrator of the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship for lower-income students.)

“It’s been an odd year,” Bautista said, explaining that most of the inquires she received over the summer came from families who had children with underlying health conditions or who lived with elderly relatives. Other calls came from international families planning to move to the United States but whose visas got delayed due to the pandemic. Other families wanted the chance to watch how campus re-openings went before committing to sending their children back.

“Some families made it very clear their intention was to only enroll for the first semester,” Bautista said. “They are hoping by January or the end of the first quarter they can go back to campus. Some said they might do a whole year and have a virtual year.”

That’s fine with her. The virtual school operates on a semester system, has a pool of part-time certified teachers, and is used to being nimble. They also see their primary purpose as supporting traditional Catholic schools.

“If a school calls and says, ‘This is an issue that we have, can you help us,’ 99.9 percent of the time, we say, ‘Yes, we can,’” Bautista said. “We don’t have a minimum enrollment. If one student from one school needs Algebra I, we can offer it.”

 Virtual school leaders want to ensure continued growth by raising awareness and offering new programs, such as recently launched theology classes for adults. COVID-19 has provided an opportunity for Catholic schools to extend their reach, especially as people become more comfortable learning online, Bautista said.

“We’re expanding our marketing for the school to reach everyone,” said Ayers, the special program director for the archdiocese. “We are going to meet the needs of all students – not just gifted or special needs students, but all students.”

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BipartisanshipBlog GuestCommentary and OpinionDan LipsEducation and Public PolicyEducation ChoiceEducation EquityEducation LegislationEducation Savings AccountsEducation SpendingFeaturedParental ChoicePrivate School ScholarshipsSchool Choice

How children’s savings accounts can promote equal opportunity

Dan Lips
Dan Lips

Editor’s note: In this commentary, Dan Lips revisits an opinion piece Robert Reich wrote 20 years ago about progressive school vouchers in which Reich offered a promising grand compromise between the left’s and right’s visions for education reform. Today, Lips writes, state-funded children’s savings accounts are a new promising compromise strategy to promote equal opportunity.

The pandemic has exposed persistent inequality in American education. All children suffer when schools remain closed. But children from lower socioeconomic backgrounds face the biggest challenges. The current crisis should lead policymakers to consider new long-term strategies to promote equal opportunity. 

Twenty years ago, former Clinton Administration Labor Secretary Robert Reich proposed a creative compromise between the left and right’s competing visions for education. Writing in the Wall Street Journal, he made the case for progressive school vouchers. 

“The only way to begin to decouple poor kids from lousy schools is to give poor kids additional resources, along with vouchers enabling them and their parents to choose how to use them,” Reich wrote. He proposed providing vouchers to children on a sliding-scale based on parental income with the poorest quintile receiving $12,000 and the richest quintile getting $2,000. Children could use the scholarship to attend any school of choice. 

Two decades later, progress has been made expanding disadvantaged children’s opportunities to attend higher-quality schools through open enrollment, charter schools and scholarship programs. Moreover, national data show that past differences in public funding available to schools serving children from poor and rich households have been narrowed.

But large educational achievement and attainment gaps between rich and poor children persist. And no grand bargain between the Left and Right has been reached to create progressive school vouchers to promote equal opportunity.

Former Secretary Reich probably isn’t surprised. At the time, he described his proposal as “a very long shot for now,” since it would require pooling and redistributing property tax revenues, boosting federal and state funding, and overcoming teacher union opposition. 

But the former Labor Secretary’s proposed compromise is worth remembering as policymakers search for new solutions to promote equal opportunity.

A new approach to addressing inequality could be to create progressive children’s savings account programs to improve long-term access to college and job training and expand choice in K-12 education.

Across the United States, states, cities, and nonprofit organizations are making direct investments into young children’s savings accounts, often starting at birth. For example, all children born in Maine are eligible to receive a $500 investment into an education savings account funded by the Alfond Scholarship Foundation. Kindergartens in Nevada receive a $50 investment into a savings account upon entering school. Rhode Island’s College Bound Baby program provides every baby a $100 education savings account investment.

These programs are premised on the idea that seed investments will encourage parents to continue saving and lift children’s expectations for postsecondary education. Washington University researchers studied how such programs affect children – holding a lottery and awarding $1,000 investments to randomly selected children in Oklahoma. Years later, they found that these investments increased children’s college savings, raised parents’ expectations, and improved children’s social-emotional development compared to their peers.

Looking forward, children’s savings accounts programs have the potential to do much more to address inequality.

Programs that encourage investments into children’s savings accounts generally use the state’s 529 account program to manage investments. Under federal law, 529 accounts now allow tax-free savings for college expenses, job training, and K-12 tuition. More than 30 states and the District of Columbia currently offer tax deductions or credits for investments made into children’s 529 accounts.

Federal and state policymakers could establish new mechanisms to encourage or provide direct investments into disadvantaged children’s accounts to promote equal opportunity. Over time, investing in these accounts would give lower-income parents more flexibility to overcome poverty and ensure their child receives a high-quality education.

Congressional lawmakers have proposed expanding allowed uses of 529 accounts to include tutoring and other outside-of-school learning costs, which could be particularly helpful to address long term learning loss from the ongoing school closures. If allowed uses are expanded to include tutoring, investments in lower-income children’s saving account could reduce differences in outside of school learning opportunities and narrow achievement gaps.

Unlike former Secretary Reich’s proposal, progressive children’s savings accounts would not pose an immediate threat to teacher unions by redirecting existing school funding. To be sure, there will be challenges, including competing for government funding during an economic downturn with overburdened federal and state budgets. And as Reich wrote in 2000, “[t]he largest challenge is to convince each side in the current education battle that they have only part of the answer, and their opponents have the other.” 

Democrats often express a desire to reduce wealth inequality. Republicans speak often of expanding educational choices for disadvantaged parents. Progressive children’s savings account programs can advance both principles and should be a solution that both sides can support.

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Commentary and OpinionEducation and Public PolicyEducation ChoiceFeaturedParental ChoicePrivate School ScholarshipsSchool Choice

Milwaukee parental choice program reaps benefits beyond academics

Matthew Ladner
Matthew Ladner

“There are more things in heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in a test score analysis …” Shakespeare by way of Ladner

Learning to read proficiently and to understand math are two jolly important goals for our schools. They are by far, however, not the only goals.

Americans want students equipped with the academic knowledge and training for success, but they also aspire to broader types of success in the formation of character – the ability to exercise citizenship responsibly and to function as productive members of society, for instance.

A new study from Patrick Wolf, a professor of education policy at the University of Arkansas, and Corey DeAngelis of the Reason Foundation, published in the Journal of Private Enterprise, tracks long-term outcomes associated with the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program. The MPCP makes low-income students eligible to receive a voucher to attend a private school.

The authors carefully construct a comparison group and analyze the long-term social welfare effects on students who have been offered a voucher after controlling for a variety of student background characteristics. They found that exposure to the MPCP is associated with a reduction of about 53% in drug convictions, 86% in property damage convictions and 38% in paternity suits. Effects tend to be largest for males and students with lower levels of academic achievement at baseline.

So, in addition to academic benefits of the program, including a higher high school graduation rate, MPCP participants also have lower criminal conviction rates and less time in family court. The average MPCP voucher was worth $7,943 in 2018-19 while the average total spending per pupil in the Milwaukee Public Schools was $15,250 in 2017-18.

Just imagine what Milwaukee students might do if they got equitable funding, and if their families could utilize that funding for educational benefits beyond private school tuition. There would almost be enough money left over to pay for the sort of enrichment activities that the top decile American families pay for things like summer camps and tutors.

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