Quality doesn't follow rise in voucher schools

Alan Borsuk:

Keith Nelson says it has been a godsend for Wisconsin Academy to take part in Milwaukee's school voucher program. Thirteen voucher students are enrolled this fall, which stands to bring the school more than $83,000 in public money this school year.

The 13 students are less than a thousandth of the 23,198 city of Milwaukee residents whose education in private schools - the vast majority of them religious - is being supported by tax dollars this fall.

But the Wisconsin Academy involvement is eye-catching: The coed boarding high school with about 100 students is in Columbus, northeast of Madison and more than 70 miles from Milwaukee.

And the school's involvement illustrates the core essence of the voucher program. Whether you find it wonderful, enraging or simply really interesting, it is (best as I've ever figured out) a fact that nowhere in America, present or past, has so much public money been spent on sending children to religious schools. Both the Wisconsin and United States supreme courts have found this constitutional.

Posted by Jim Zellmer at November 19, 2011 10:24 PM
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