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February 24, 2006
Much ado about Milwaukee from near
Lot of news lately from and about Milwaukee as the Wisconsin legislature considers a bill to expand the city's school voucher program. The bill is a compromise between Governor Jim Doyle and Assembly Speaker John Gard. Quick background: the 16-year-old program has been inching toward its state mandated cap of 15 percent of Milwaukee Public Schools' enrollment, or about 15,000 students. The cap is expected to be reached in the upcoming school year. Without a change, the state Department of Public Instruction would implement a rationing plan across participating schools. Details on that plan from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel here.
Late last week, Doyle and Gard struck a deal, outlined by the Journal Sentinel here.
Key pieces of the compromise: 1) the cap increases from 15,000 students to 22,500; 2) voucher schools must get accreditation from an outside group (More on this below); 3) requires voucher schools to give students a standardized test and report scores to the Legislative Audit Bureau for use in a longitudinal study (Note: the test would not have to be one required of public schools, which would allow for apples-to-apples comparisons); 4) alters the means-testing eligibility requirements so that students in families whose income crosses the threshold continue receiving vouchers; and, 5) would provide $25 million over two years to the state's class size reduction program for public schools, though that would subject to the whims of the Legislature's budget process and would not start until 2008-09.
This week, an Assembly committee approved the compromise. Notable among the "no" votes was Rep. Annette Polly Williams of Milwaukee, the author of the legislation that created the program in 1990, and who previously signaled her opposition to the compromise though no news reports have yet indicated why.
With myriad scandals in recent years, like this and this, the program's lack of accountability has been pushed to the forefront of the debate. That's likely one reason lawmakers want the voucher schools to be accredited by an outside agency. One potential accrediting agency under the compromise would be Marquette University's Institute for the Transformation of Learning. The founder and director of ITL is Dr. Howard Fuller, one of the city's and nation's foremost voices for vouchers. He testified in support of the compromise this week. In fairness, Fuller has expressed concern about the lack of quality of some voucher schools, and acknowledged last year that voucher advocates' theory that the marketplace provides all the needed accountability has not panned out in the real world.
Voucher schools are expected to take a sizable financial hit, with some said to perhaps have to close if the compromise fails and the rationing plan goes into effect. That ought to send chills through private school supporters who wonder about the wisdom of taxpayer-funded vouchers. In Milwaukee, many of the participating private schools have essentially become dependent on the government for financial support. In its well-done 7-part series last summer, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel revealed that more than 2 in 3 private school students use vouchers.
While most talk suggests the compromise will pass, some Wisconsin editorial pages don't think it should. The Capital Times seethes in its disapproval. And the Appleton Post-Crescent, concerned about the program's ongoing lack of accountability and education standards, calls it an "unacceptable."
Posted February 24, 2006 9:00 AM |
Privatization & Choice
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