The school choice program got a big boost in the biennial budget. First, Governor Walker proposed repealing enrollment caps, income eligibility restrictions, and specific testing requirements for the Milwaukee school choice program.
Although the Joint Finance Committee restored income eligibility and testing requirements, it also expanded school choice to the City of Racine and left the door open for school choice in Green Bay as well. Rep. Robin Vos said that the program has proved popular with parents and has improved public education.
The Joint Finance Committee also approved the Governor’s recommendations to protect the per-student voucher payment to choice schools from reductions – at the same time that it cut state aid to public schools, and reduced the amount of revenue public schools can raise at the local level.
This expansion of the school choice program came despite the vociferous objection of State Superintendent Tony Evers, who said: “To spend hundreds of millions to expand a 20-year-old program that has not improved overall student achievement, while defunding public education, is morally wrong.”Evers released a memo that raised questions about a number of aspects of school choice, and made the point that private schools in Milwaukee now almost exclusively serve students with school choice vouchers. Specifically, in the 2010-11 school year, on average 83 percent of the students in a school participating in the choice program were on publicly-funded vouchers. In fact, half of schools in the choice program had 94 percent or more of their students on vouchers.
Evers also raised questions about the extent to which the doors of private schools are open to students with disabilities. Schools in the school choice program are prohibited from discriminating against students with disabilities. However, according to figures from the Department of Public Instruction show that the portion of students with disabilities in Milwaukee private schools was a mere 0.7 percent in the 2010-11 school year, compared to 19.9 percent of students in Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS). In one recent school year, only 14 of the 28,893 students in Milwaukee private schools had disabilities (0.0 percent).
This week, a group of parents and civil rights organizations filed suit in federal court, alleging that the Milwaukee school choice program discriminates against students with disabilities.
The expansion of school choice, and the concerns raised by Evers, lead to a number of questions about the role of school choice in our larger public education system, including: When all or nearly all of the students attending a private school are funded with public dollars, should the school be subject to the same requirements and regulations as a public school? What will happen to students with disabilities, who are more expensive to educate, as the state devotes more resources to private schools and fewer to public schools? Why have the Governor and Legislature chosen to pair the expansion of school choice with a steep cut in investment in public schools?
The Governor’s and Legislature’s commitment to expanding school choice means we may soon have the answer to some of these questions, but others will likely remain unanswered.
Tamarine Cornelius
