New short film exposes Milwaukee schools' efforts to block high-performing competitors

Ben Velderman:

Hundreds of Milwaukee families have discovered in recent years that having a school voucher doesn't mean much if your private school of choice doesn't have the classroom space to accommodate additional children.

In Bad Faith screen grab topSuch is the case for the city's St. Marcus Lutheran School. The high-performing private school has a long waiting list for any available seats that open up, and it's not difficult to understand why. By virtually all measures, St. Marcus Lutheran is outperforming Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS) - its government-run counterpart - by a wide margin. The most telling statistic is probably the schools' graduation rates: St. Marcus succeeds in getting a diploma into the hands of 96 percent of its students, compared to MPS' dismal 65 percent graduation rate.

If families who qualify for the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program could flee their neighborhood government school, many of them obviously would. More than 25,000 students already have fled the district, which has caused MPS' enrollment to crater. The attendance drop, in turn, has led to a surplus of school buildings the downsized district no longer needs.

But MPS leaders don't want alternative schools using the empty buildings.

MPS officials believe that St. Marcus Lutheran and other high-quality voucher and charter schools pose an existential threat to the district, which is why they've devised a very clever plan to block the schools' size and future growth by denying them access to the city's vacant and unused school buildings

Posted by Jim Zellmer at January 31, 2014 12:29 AM
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