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Chris Rickert: The free charter school is required to meet minimum instructional hour requirements contained in state law, which Davis said the school exceeds because its school day runs from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. and its year from Sept. 1 to July 31, longer than most traditional public schools. The school will continue to […]
Dan Shafer: The crisis in Milwaukee K-12 education is huge. This cannot be overstated. Yet, the trend seems to be toward getting smaller and smaller. For example, Milwaukee Public Schools just released its annual budget proposal noting it expects to lose 1,000 students between now and the start of the 2022-2023 school year, reducing enrollment to about 67,500 […]
Madeline Fox: “I plan to focus on a broad spectrum of issues, including making sure students have access to high quality schools across the state, curriculum transparency and making sure that schools follow the constitution in enacting policies that respect and empower parents and their constitutional right to direct the upbringing of their child,” Brewer […]
Molly Beck: Republican lawmakers plan to propose a sweeping package of legislation to overhaul K-12 education in Wisconsin that would break up the state’s largest school district within two years and expand private-school vouchers to every student, regardless of family income. The proposal is part of a package that expands taxpayer-funded alternatives to public schools, […]
Will Flanders So, what happened? Why is HOPE closing their high school doors? Schools in the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program (as well as the state’s other school choice programs) receive significantly less funding per student than do traditional public schools in the same area. For instance, Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS) receives about $13,344 per student […]
Will Flanders & Libby Sobic: Like an old IPod set on repeat, Milwaukee Public Schools’ attempts to attack and provide misleading data about the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program (MPCP) is a song-and-dance that never stops. In their latest salvo against providing families with educational options, the district included information on the “cost” to Milwaukee residents […]
Libby Sobic and Anthony LoCoco: The U.S. Supreme Court recently held oral arguments in Carson v. Makin, a case that challenges Maine’s decision to prevent certain private religious schools from participating in its tuition benefit program for families without access to a local public high school. This case will likely provide guidance as to whether states can […]
Samuel Robinson: Gov. Gretchen Whitmer vetoed several Republican-sponsored bills Friday that would have granted tax credits for contributions to scholarship programs that could be used for nonpublic schooling. The governor had promised last month to veto the proposed scholarship program that Democratic critics said would have incentivized sending kids to private schools. Republican supporters of […]
Phillip Magness: Is the school choice movement historically tainted by racism? American Federation of Teachers boss Randi Weingarten described vouchers in 2017 as “slightly more polite cousins of segregation.” Historian Nancy MacLean recently depicted vouchers as a product of an unholy alliance between economist Milton Friedman and segregationists after Brown v. Board of Education. According […]
Wall Street Journal: Students with disabilities, in foster care, or in families making no more than 200% of the income cap for reduced-price lunches—nearly $100,000 for a family of four—would be eligible. Individuals or businesses that donate to the scholarship funds would receive a tax credit equal to their donation. The legislation allows up to […]
Alan Borsuk: It started out in Fall 1991 with 337 students in seven schools. Religious schools weren’t allowed to participate then and only one of those seven schools (Bruce Guadalupe) still exists. The program grew slowly until 1998, when the Wisconsin Supreme Court became the first high court in the nation to rule that using […]
Jason Bedrock and Ed Tarnowski: With 18 states enacting seven new educational choice programs and expanding 21 existing ones, 2021 has rightly been declared a “breakthrough year” for school choice. In the wake of all this progress, the one question we at EdChoice are most frequently asked is: how many students are newly eligible to […]
Noah Diekemper and Will Flanders: A new poll of likely Democratic Primary voters in Milwaukee County provides an interesting window into the divides over school choice and the Democratic coalition. The poll, commissioned by Milwaukee Works, a 501c4 organization with a focus on good governance in Milwaukee, asked respondents about a variety of issues, but school choice […]
Wall Street Journal: It’s been a banner year for school choice in the states, and legislatures aren’t finished expanding scholarship and education savings account programs (ESAs). In four state budgets that passed in the last two weeks, lawmakers included provisions that give families more educational opportunities. In New Hampshire last week, Republican lawmakers approved Education […]
Bethany Blankley: As school choice bills continue to make their way through state legislatures, a report on student achievement published by the University of Arkansas’s Department of Education Reform argues that the more educational options are afforded parents, the better statewide test results are. “We find that higher levels of school choice are significantly associated […]
James Wigderson: The governor’s proposed state budget included an assault on school choice, three assaults actually, as Will Flanders of the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty (WILL) pointed out. The budget included an enrollment cap on all private school voucher programs, eliminating the charter school authorizer Office of Educational Opportunity, and a requirement that […]
Jane’s Wigderson: The presentation on the effectiveness of school choice coincides with more good news about more choices for parents who qualify for the state’s Private School Choice Programs. The Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction announced Thursday that 29 more schools will be participating in the programs next year: The Wisconsin Parental Choice Program, which […]
Drew Catt: We’re used to people freaking out whenever states consider creating private educational choice programs. The common refrain goes, “But it will drain money from our already underfunded public schools. It will break our budgets!” There are a lot of problems with the ethos and the pathos of that response worth digging into another […]
Cori Petersen: This past fall, many public schools made the decision to go virtual as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. However, this wasn’t the case for most private schools. In fact, according to the National Association of Independent Schools, only 5% of private schools went virtual as of October. This is driving demand for […]
Elizabeth Beyer: The Madison School District, where the issue has drawn public scrutiny in recent years, reported using restraint or seclusion 1,259 times on students during the 2019-20 school year, including 233 incidents involving students with disabilities. On a per-pupil basis, that ranked 40th among the state’s school districts. The report is the first of […]
Will Flanders: The pandemic has emphasized the importance of having many educational options available to families. Private schools, which have been more willing to keep their doors open than public schools throughout the pandemic, are one such critical option. Open enrollment into neighboring districts that may offer an alternative model of education are another one. Yet for […]
Wall Street Journal: Teachers unions have pushed to shut down schools during the pandemic no matter the clear harm to children, just as they oppose charters and vouchers. Now comes a timely study suggesting school choice improves student mental health. Several studies have found that school choice reduces arrests and that private-school students experience less […]
Annysa Johnson, Samantha West and Alec Johnson: Enrollment in Wisconsin public schools fell by 3% this year, the largest dip in decades, and private schools that accept taxpayer-funded vouchers saw an increase, though not as much as last year. In all, according to new data released Thursday by the state Department of Public Instruction, public schools […]
Statesman: What Biden says about school choice The Biden campaign said he’s firmly against using public money for private K-12 schools. Here’s the full statement we received: “Joe Biden opposes the Trump/(Betsy) DeVos conception of ‘school choice,’ which is private school vouchers that would destroy our public schools. He’s also against for-profit and low-performing charter […]
Paul E. Peterson and M. Danish Shakeel: Public charter schools were once viewed as a nonpartisan compromise between vouchers for private schools and no choice at all. Not now. In its 2020 national platform, the Democratic Party calls for “stringent guardrails to ensure charter schools are good stewards” and says federal funding for charters must […]
Paul E. Peterson and M. Danish Shakeel: Public charter schools were once viewed as a nonpartisan compromise between vouchers for private schools and no choice at all. Not now. In its 2020 national platform, the Democratic Party calls for “stringent guardrails to ensure charter schools are good stewards” and says federal funding for charters must […]
Joanne Jacobs: Thirty years ago, Milwaukee launched a private-school voucher program for low-income students. In 1998, when religious schools were allowed to participate, enrollment expanded. Overall, test scores for voucher students resemble their public school counterparts. But there’s a critical difference: Voucher students are more likely to complete high school, enroll in college and earn a […]
Chris Rickert: A group of parents and private religious schools is asking the Wisconsin Supreme Court to void a Dane County order barring in-person school for most students, saying the order issued in response to the COVID-19 pandemic infringes on the right to worship and to an education. “This case challenges the authority of one […]
Corey DeAngelis: School closures have affected over 55 million K–12 students in the U.S. since March as the nation deals with the coronavirus pandemic. Although numerous private schools and day care centers have adjusted to the pandemic and reopened, many public school districts and teachers unions are fighting to remain closed in the name of […]
The Week: If schools aren’t going to reopen, we’re not suggesting pulling funding from education,” DeVos told Fox News in a interview. “Instead,” the government is considering “allowing families … (to) take that money and figure out where their kids can get educated if their schools are going to refuse to open,” she said. It’s […]
Libby Sobic: Yesterday the Supreme Court of the United States handed down a landmark decision that will allow low-income parents across the country to send their children to private schools with their taxpayer dollars. In a 5–4 ruling, the Court decided in favor of Kendra Espinoza and two other mothers in their case brought by […]
WILL: The News: The Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty (WILL) sued the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction (DPI) on behalf of a West Allis family, Heritage Christian Schools, and School Choice Wisconsin Action (SCWA), after the department adopted an illegal policy to block a family from enrolling in the Wisconsin Parental Choice Program (WPCP) – the statewide […]
Chris Stewart: Public schools in New Mexico aren’t funding students equitably, so says the U.S. Department Education who accuse the state’s leaders of “diverting [$63 million] in federal Impact Aid grants” intended to help school districts that are disadvantaged by their low tax bases. The feds found that New Mexico wasn’t passing the “equity test,” […]
Corey DeAngelis: The United States invests over $660 billion for K-12 education, or over $13,000 per student, each year, on average.1 Real education expenditures in the U.S. have nearly quadrupled in the past half century without consistent improvements in student outcomes (Hanushek, 1997, 2015a, 2015b; Hanushek & Lindseth, 2009, 2010). Because education dollars are scarce resources, and because students’ academic success […]
Original Op Ed Preston C. Green III I am writing this post to alert my fellow professors about a situation I recently encountered after publishing a piece with the Hechinger Institute. This organization approached Bruce Baker and me to write an op-ed explaining the possible consequences of the Espinoza v. Montana State Department of Revenue […]
David N. Figlio, Cassandra M.D. Hart, Krzysztof Karbownik: Using a rich dataset that merges student-level school records with birth records, and a student fixed effect design, we explore how the massive scale-up of a Florida private school choice program affected public school students’ outcomes. Expansion of the program produced modestly larger benefits for students attending […]
Cori Petersen: This week has marked the tenth annual National School Choice Week, a celebration of educational options all over the country, but in Wisconsin, school choice is a much older tradition. Here, 2020 marks the thirty-year anniversary of school vouchers aka the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program (MPCP). As we celebrate this legacy, I sat […]
Jon Gabriel: This week, reporters revealed that the state Department of Education released the personal information of nearly 7,000 families who use Empowerment Scholarship Accounts. Worse still, they sent it to Save Our Schools, staunch opponents of the program and educational choice in general. ESAs enable parents, mostly those who have children with special needs, to […]
Dillon Rosenblat: The Arizona Department of Education likely violated federal student privacy laws when it released a spreadsheet that inadvertently named every parent with an Empowerment Scholarship Account in the state. The spreadsheet then fell into the hands of a group that opposes expansion of the program. The Yellow Sheet Report, a sister publication of […]
At the Pence rally. A lot of people here with yellow sashes in support of school vouchers. Many nonwhite. — Rocknrolli OneAndOnly (@RocknRocknrolli) January 28, 2020 .@vp mentions @GovEvers‘s absence and a bill to be reintroduced today by @RepBrostoff to phase out school vouchers in Wisconsin: “I know the governor can’t be here with us […]
Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty: On the first day of National School Choice Week, a new study (here) estimates how further growth of Wisconsin’s parental choice programs could result in $3.2 billion in new economic benefits to Wisconsin over the next two decades. Ripple Effect, authored by Will Flanders, PhD, builds upon a recent study which documented […]
Laura Waters: On New Year’s Eve The Nation published an analysis by Jennifer Berkshire called “The Democrats’ School Choice Problem.” Her piece is instructive because it illustrates a strategy commonly employed by those who regard themselves as warriors against craven privatizing shysters intent on expanding charter schools and/or voucher programs. This is how it works: […]
Erica L. Green and Eliza Shapiro The night before Democratic presidential candidates took to a debate stage here last week, black and Latino charter school parents and supporters gathered in a bland hotel conference room nearby to make signs they hoped would get the politicians’ attention. “Charter schools = self-determination,” one sign read. “Black Democrats want charters!” […]
Matthew Ladner: School choice is a hot topic in the United States. Private school vouchers, public charter schools, open enrollment, and homeschooling all regularly appear on the policy agenda as ways to improve the educational experience and outcomes for students, parents, and the broader society. Pundits often make claims about the various ways in which […]
Jim Bender: As a district, Madison enrolls students who are 42% white, 14.5% with disabilities and 48.2% listed as economically disadvantaged. The Madison district report card score is 72.3 Lighthouse Christian enrolls students who are 90% of color, 14.8% with disabilities and 87% listed as economically disadvantaged. Their report card score is 83 based solely […]
Collin Anderson: Democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren raked in tens of thousands of dollars from teachers’ unions before reversing her past support for student vouchers and education reform. In 2004, Warren argued that vouchers “relieve parents” from relying on failing public schools. Her campaign’s newly-released education plan attacks charter schools and school choice. Warren’s reversal […]
Will Flanders: In the never-ending debate on test scores in Milwaukee’s Parental Choice Program, old is new again. Alan Borsuk, in his most recent column discussing the topic, brings up the possibility that higher scores in choice schools might be the result of better parents and students taking advantage of the program, leaving the worse […]
Marisa Peryer: Established in 2015, the school is part of a nationwide network of 35 Cristo Rey Jesuit schools that predominantly reach students from low-income families. Students spend four days a week at the school, then one day a week at businesses across greater Milwaukee as part of the work-study program. The students are not […]
Will Flanders: Here are 5 findings for our upcoming report on school performance: 1. Milwaukee: Choice Schools Lead in Student Proficiency (even more significantly than DPI data suggests) Wisconsin’s private and charter schools, much maligned by Governor Evers and other leaders on the left, continue to succeed for Wisconsin students. Once schools are put on […]
Corey DeAngelis: Using Evers’ own publicly available Accountability Report Card data from the 2017-18 school year, I find that private schools participating in choice programs and independent charter schools tend to offer the citizens of Wisconsin more “bang for the buck” than district-run public schools. Specifically, private schools deliver 2.27 more Accountability Report Card points […]
Laura Baigert: However, the NewsChannel 5 story fails to identify any sources upon which it relied to make these bold assertions about a purported FBI investigation into “whether any improper incentives were offered to pass Gov. Bill Lee’s school vouchers bill.” The story simply states “NewsChannel 5 Investigates has learned,” and “NewsChannel 5 has learned.” […]
Patrick Jonsson: Chikara Parks is a registered Democrat and a “huge fan of public schools.” The single mom of four school-aged children is also a fan of vouchers. Ms. Parks, who is African American, has, with the help of Florida’s tax credit scholarship for families with limited resources, parlayed her children’s struggle in public schools […]
Libby Sobic and Will Flanders: This change in accreditation also makes it more difficult for existing private schools to join the parental choice program because it is one more regulation that the school must comply with. The plan is even more ridiculous when one considers that Wisconsin’s public schools aren’t required to go through any […]
Curiously, this document is NOT shared as part of the Madison School Board public documents. Chan Stroman obtained the April 4, 2019 70 page package via an open records request (!). The April 4, 2019 document contains a number of interesting links and shares, including a summary of Governor Ever’s (Former long time Wisconsin DPI […]
David Blaska: I met many people throughout the city (and reconnected with sister Jane). Gratified at the many educators, teaching support staff, and mainstream Democrats who said they voted for me. Another shout-out to liberal downtown Madison blogger Greg Humphrey. That took courage. We started a long overdue conversation in this community. That will continue. […]
Will Flanders: First, it is important to note that spending on school choice represents a minuscule share of the state’s education spending. For fiscal year 18-19, Wisconsin spent $5,899,757,400 in aid to local school districts according to LFB. Spending on school choice was $192 million, or about three percent of that total. To make the […]
Alan Borsuk: There was a window from 1995 to 1998 when it wasn’t clear what the future of private school vouchers would be in Wisconsin. The state Legislature voted in 1995 to increase the number of vouchers available to low-income Milwaukee children and, for the first time, to allow students attending religious schools to take […]
Negassi Tesfamichael: The nine candidates in a crowded primary for three seats on the Madison School Board made their case to an audience gathered at Christ Presbyterian Church Tuesday evening. The forum, organized by the Grandparents United for Madison Public Schools, was the first time the candidates shared the stage during the current election cycle. […]
Wall Street Journal: One issue that helped Florida Governor Ron DeSantis beat progressive Andrew Gillum in November’s gubernatorial nail-biter was his support for the state’s private school voucher program. To understand why that mattered, consider a report this week on the link between K-12 school choice and college success. Nearly 100,000 low-income students can attend […]
Ed Kilgore: The growing militancy of teachers unions and their tendency to make uncontrolled growth of charter schools a primary issue means Booker won’t be able to dodge or finesse the issue much longer. And the way the wind is blowing in Democratic circles was amply illustrated by a recent column from former Chicago mayor […]
Susan Endres: “It’s important for districts and taxpayers to understand the effect of open enrollment and the movement of money that occurs there, too,” he said. “Because there are a higher number of kids who open-enroll from public school to public school than receive vouchers through the state.” Ruddy made the same connection. “I think […]
David Blaska: The occasion was a school board candidate forum. An organization named GRUMPS sponsored it. It stands for GRandparents United for Madison Public Schools. Its major domos are former school board members Nan Brien, Anne Arnesen, Barbara Arnold, Arlene Silviera, and Carol Carstensen. We also encountered former board guys Bill Keyes, Bill Clingan, and […]
Negassi Tesfamichael: MTI cited Carusi’s opposition to voucher and independent charter schools in its endorsement. “Carusi is opposed to vouchers and independent charter schools and strongly believes that we need to continuously work to improve our public schools, rather than support alternatives,” MTI’s endorsement said. Caire’s One City Schools, which expanded from One City Early […]
Molly Beck and Kevin Crowe: The state ratings are assigned by analyzing data related to academics, attendance and graduation rates from the 2017-’18 school year and reported through DPI’s state report card system, which assigns five-star ratings to public schools and private voucher schools. Nearly 84 percent of the state’s public and private voucher schools […]
Matt Beienburg: Most recently, for example, The Republic’s October 25 exposé on ESA usage cast a damning light on the program. Unfortunately, it’s The Republic’s analysis, not the ESA program, that needs to be drawn into the light. The Republic’s story makes two key assertions: 1) that ESAs are disproportionately used by and serve the […]
Will Flanders: Calls for more regulation of Wisconsin’s school choice programs have been getting louder. Making the claims that performance isn’t consistent enough, generally on standardized tests, they argue that government—or some outside entity—needs greater control of school entry and school exit in the state. However, a new study by Corey DeAngelis of the Cato […]
John E. Coons: The second book, “Family Choice in Education” (Institute of Government Studies, 1971), was essentially the text of a model statute for parental choice with substantial comment by Steve and myself upon each section. The model presupposed the participation of public as well as private schools in the market created by vouchers. The […]
The Wall Street Journal: Teachers’ unions and their liberal allies are desperately trying to preserve the failing public school status quo. Witness how the Milwaukee Public School (MPS) system is defying a state mandate to sell vacant property to charter and private schools. Milwaukee’s public schools are a mess. Merely 62% of students graduate from […]
Christian D’Andrea: Several reform-minded schools have carved similar paths for I Promise to follow. The Knowledge is Power Program, better known as KIPP, has created the nation’s largest network of charter schools by catering to marginalized students with longer class hours, increasing access to teachers, and a tough but accommodating schedule for students. Rocketship Public […]
Scoot Milfred and Phil Hands: Usual mumbo-jumbo, we do on this podcast. Why don’t we invite in today some experts to talk about our topic which is around school. Which Madison is finally going to give a try this fall to experts. I know very well we have all hands on deck here. We have […]
Will Flanders: The Special Needs Scholarship Program (SNSP) represents an important new option for families of students with disabilities in Wisconsin. The SNSP provides a substantially larger voucher for families of students with disabilities who do not feel their needs are being met in the traditional public school setting to attend a private school that […]
Susan Dynarski: New York City is wrestling with what to do with its exam schools. Students at Stuyvesant, Bronx Science, and Brooklyn Tech (the oldest exam schools) perform brilliantly and attend the best colleges. Their students score at the 99th percentile of the state SAT distribution (with Stuyvesant at the 99.9th percentile) and they account […]
Keith Brannon: The U.S. Department of Education’s Institute of Education Sciences has awarded a five-year, $10 million grant to Tulane University to study how different approaches to school choice, such as voucher programs and charter schools, can better serve disadvantaged students. The grant will create the National Center for Research on Education Access and Choice […]
Corey A. DeAngelis: These positive effects are all large. For example, the most recent federal evaluation of the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program found that vouchers increased the likelihood that parents and students reported that the students were in very safe schools by more than 35 percent. Data from the state-mandated evaluation of the Milwaukee Parental […]
Will Flanders: A message about traditional value and civic virtue worked to drive up support among Republicans. But perhaps more surprisingly, among Democrats and minorities, messages about how school choice can increase racial diversity in schools and effectively level the playing field for low-income students increased support substantially. A slim majority — 51 percent — […]
Christian Schneider: The last line of the Sentinel article added one final bullet point, almost as an afterthought. The day before, Thompson had signed a “parental choice” program which would soon allow 930 Milwaukee students to attend a private, non-sectarian school for free. In the ensuing 28 years, Milwaukee’s school choice program has been fiercely […]
Neal McCluskey: Polling reveals that parents, especially African Americans, want school choice. Studies show choice students pulling even with public school kids even in laggard programs, and often surpassing them. And states keep expanding choice initiatives as families flock to them. Perhaps because of all this good news, opponents of expanding the options available to […]
Alan Borsuk: Teachers and the teachers’ union. Don’t expect a happy workforce. The union has turned up the volume on its unhappiness and it remains a powerful force, even without the bargaining powers it had before Act 10, which dramatically curtailed collective bargaining for most public employees, including teachers. Beyond the union itself, it won’t […]
Alan Borsuk: Private schools and charter schools that educate more than a third of the city’s children are showing general stability and, in notable cases, growth, even as they are having increased problems dealing positively with MPS. Both the charter schools (publicly funded but operating outside of the conventional MPS system) and the private schools […]
Tawnell Hobbs: Private schools are lowering tuition, ramping up marketing and targeting traditionally underrepresented communities to reverse a national enrollment decline. Enrollment in private schools for grades pre-K to 12, including parochial schools, dropped by 14%—to 6.3 million in 2016 from 7.3 million in 2006, according to data from the U.S. Census Bureau. Overall school […]
Alan Borsuk: Private schools, most of them religious, using vouchers. The total for voucher students this year (28,702) is up a few hundred from a year ago and is edging toward a quarter of all the Milwaukee kids who receive a publicly-funded education. What a huge change from a generation ago, when the number was […]
Krista Holtzmann: Considering the consequential nature of the upcoming Douglas County school board election to our students, it is imperative that the public receives all the facts. As a member of the commUNITY candidate team, which includes Anthony Graziano, Kevin Leung, Chris Schor and myself, I can attest to our positions on several issues: We […]
Alan Borsuk: A setting for greatness: I was part of a program a few days ago with 40 or so leaders of Milwaukee-area public school districts. One thing I said was that I didn’t see much bold action or big orders coming their way from Washington. And there wasn’t much big news in the state […]
Alan Borsuk: Statewide vouchers: A big reason the voucher scene in Wisconsin is so complicated is that there are separate programs for Milwaukee, Racine and the rest of Wisconsin, each with its own rules. In this round of state budgeting, it was decided to make more people eligible for vouchers statewide by raising the maximum […]
Will Flanders: Unfortunately, the public schools have not responded as well to increased competition. Aided by politicians like Representative Taylor, public schools leaders have chosen to not to embrace competition but to seek protection from it, fighting the growth of better educational alternatives at every turn. While creating an incentive to improve, school choice has […]
Robin Lake & Sivan Tuchman: Many respected national groups have recently set their sights on school choice as the new battlefront for disability rights. They are anywhere from open to highly skeptical to adamantly opposed to charter schools and private school choice, often aligning with teachers unions to try to block new proposals or to […]
Larry Sand: It’s hardly news that teachers’ union honchos oppose any type of school choice, especially the kind that lets public money follow a child to a public school. But while making her case recently, American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten descended down a rabbit hole. It started with an event on “school vouchers […]
Corey DeAngelis: The Actual Test Score Results – and Their Implications Even the latest experimental results, which show that voucher students in Louisiana and Indiana caught up with or did better than their public school peers on test scores, are less optimistic than prior voucher studies. However, there is not a clear theory for why […]
Alan Borsuk:: It’s a good thing we don’t need to change much about the overall success of students in Milwaukee because there really isn’t much change coming these days. Fewer than 20% of students in both Milwaukee Public Schools and the 100-plus private schools in the publicly funded voucher program were rated as proficient in […]
Office of Educational Opportunity (PDF): Identifying Information Name of Organization: Year Founded: Revised 5/31/2017, 11:30 a.m. Recovery School Request for Proposal First and Last Name of Primary Applicant: Mailing Address: Preferred E-Mail Address Preferred Phone Number: Attach the names, professional affiliation, and role in the proposed school for all school leaders and board members. Summarize […]
Joanne Jacobs: Louisiana students who used vouchers to switch from public to private schools did worse in the first year, then improved, concludes a University of Arkansas study. After three years, voucher students were doing as well as similar students who hadn’t switched; low performers did significantly better in English. The Indiana study looked at […]
Joanne Jacobs: Louisiana students who used vouchers to switch from public to private schools did worse in the first year, then improved, concludes a University of Arkansas study. After three years, voucher students were doing as well as similar students who hadn’t switched; low performers did significantly better in English. The Indiana study looked at […]
Robin Lake, via a kind email: When my son attended our neighborhood public elementary school, he hid under a desk every day. His teacher regularly yelled at the mostly low-income students and typically ignored him – under that desk, he was out of sight, out of mind. He tested as profoundly gifted, but a constellation […]
Claudio Sanchez: The school doesn’t offer transportation, so Henry Tyson, the man who runs St. Marcus, is known to shuttle kids to and from school whenever their parents can’t. This morning, he is on his way to pick up a little boy named Jeremiah. Tyson says Jeremiah is a talented child who lives in a […]
: Congressman Mark Pocan (D-Wis.) tried to grill Education Secretary Betsy DeVos Wednesday about the performance of the Milwaukee voucher program, at one point asking her if she’d send her own children to one of the city’s lowest-performing voucher schools. DeVos demurred on that question during a House subcommittee hearing. Later, she suggested that it […]
Washington Post: CRITICS OF school choice could not contain their glee over a new study on the District’s school voucher program showing that students attending private schools did not perform as well on standardized tests as their public school counterparts. It is pretty rich that those who have railed against using test scores to hold […]
Alan Borsuk: he best high school in Wisconsin? According to the U.S. News and World Report rankings, released several days ago, it is the Carmen High School of Science and Technology campus on Milwaukee’s south side. Which is a charter school. One of the most disheartening and alarming developments on Milwaukee’s school scene this academic […]
Jason Blakely: Buoyed by Donald Trump’s championing of a voucher system—and cheered on by his education secretary Betsy DeVos—Arizona just passed one of the country’s most thoroughgoing policies in favor of so-called “school of choice.” The legislation signed by Governor Doug Ducey allows students who withdraw from the public system to use their share of […]
Wall Street Journal: President Trump has made a cause of public and private school choice, and liberals who oppose evaluating teachers based on student achievement are now hyping a few studies that have found vouchers hurt student performance. A closer look still supports the case for giving parents choice. More than 400,000 students in 30 […]
Jim Bender: There have been a number of conflict-based education stories on the Wisconsin Parental Choice Program (WPCP) recently. In that mold, a story in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel looked at expansion of the WPCP in a piece titled “Tensions rise as vouchers pick up traction across Wisconsin.” Pitting one school type against another creates […]