Frederick Hess & Carolyn Sattin-Bajaj:

As much as any city in America, Milwaukee has played a pioneering role in educational choice. More than two decades after establishing the nation’s first urban school voucher program, Milwaukee offers families a raft of options, including district schools, charter schools and publicly funded private school scholarships.
Yet, this dramatic expansion of options has not yet translated into dramatic improvement. Student performance and graduation rates have not moved as reformers once hoped, and the achievement of low-income students continues to languish. On the 2011 urban National Assessment of Educational Progress, just 10% of Milwaukee eighth-graders were judged proficient in math and just 12% in reading. Especially disturbing is that the vast majority of public and private high school graduates who go on to attend the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee do not complete college.
But this should be cause for renewed energy, not despair. After all, the Milwaukee Public Schools district has displayed a willingness to find ways to turn around struggling schools and to tackle long-standing fiscal challenges. Milwaukee’s charter school authorizers have shown themselves willing to hold low-performing schools accountable. Schools in the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program increasingly have embraced accountability for performance. Across all three sectors, there are instances of high-performing schools where even Milwaukee’s most challenged pupils can excel.