The Milwaukee School Voucher Program

The Milwaukee Parental Choice Program was established in 1990 to provide publicly funded private school tuition for low-income children in Milwaukee. It is the largest such program in the United States. In 1999-2000, approximately 8,000 pupils are enrolled in 91 private schools under this program.

Opponents of school vouchers in general, and Proposition 38 in particular, claim that if vouchers are instituted, numerous terrible things will happen to both the public schools and students who take vouchers. But Milwaukee's 10-year experience with vouchers shows that this simply is not true. Public schools have reformed because of the competition from voucher schools, and students who take vouchers receive a better education (at a lower cost) than equivalent students in the public schools.

By all accounts, the Milwaukee program appears to be working well. The Wisconsin Legislature recently issues a favorable audit and review of the program. John Nordquist, the current Democratic mayor of Wilwaukee supports the program (as well as Proposition 38 -- he signed the ballot argument), as does Dr. Howard Fuller, the former superintendent of public instruction in Milwaukee. Dr. Fuller recently wrote an introduction to an article explaining how competition from vouchers in Milwaukee spurred public school reform. And a Harvard University study shows that students who take vouchers get a better education than they would have received if they had remained in public schools. Each of these will be discussed below.

The Wisconsin Legislaure's Favorable Audit of the Program

In February 2000, the Wisonsin Legislature issued a comprehensive audit of the program. (Here is the Wisconsin Legislature's summary of the audit with a link to the full report.) The facts in this audit refute the claim of voucher opponents that parents will choose bad private schools, that all of the schools will be religious schools, that the private schools will not offer quality education programs, and that private schools will not open in inner city neighborhoods. The Wisconsin Legislature's report noted the following:

• Parents learn about the private schools through word of mouth.
• Parents chose schools based on the perceived quality of the school. They based this decision on numerous factors, including higher educational standards (71.1 percent of respondents), good teachers (70.4 percent of respondents), and safe and orderly environments (67.8 percent of respondents).
• The racial composition of the students in the program is approximately the same as in that of the Milwaukee public schools.
• Of the 86 participating private schools in 1998-99, 63 were religious and 23 were secular.
• Geographically, participating schools are distributed throughout the city. Most enroll primarily pupils who live within three miles.
• Participating schools offer a variety of educational programs, including alternative educational approaches, bilingual or multicultural emphases, programs for at-risk pupils, and college preparatory or vocational education.

Dr. Howard Fuller -- the Superintendent of the Milwaukee Public Schools from 1990-1995 -- Discusses How Competition From Voucher Schools Spurred Public School Reform.

Dr. Howard Fuller was the Supreintendent of the Milwaukee Public Schools from 1991 through 1995. In an introduction to an April 2000 article on how the Florida Voucher Program spurred numerous public school reforms, Dr. Fuller detailed his experience in Milwaukee. (The full article including Dr. Fuller's introduction is here, and other information about the Florida voucher program can be found here.) He concludes that "providing parents with additional options increases the responsiveness and accountability of public schools, and serves as a crucial impetus for public school reform" Here are some additional excepts from his introduction:

"In this report, Carol Innerst, who for decades provided balanced coverage of education as a journalist, details how Florida school districts have undertaken significant efforts to improve public schools in response to the competitive pressure applied by the state's groundbreaking Opportunity Scholarship program. Innerst's findings came as no surprise to me. I witnessed the same effect first-hand in Milwaukee, Wisconsin."

"As superintendent of the Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS) from 1991 to 1995, I encountered the myriad of political and institutional pressures that impede meaningful change in urban schools. I found that these pressures on behalf of the status quo could stifle even the most determined and dedicated educators."

* * *

"As the MPCP [Milwaukee Parental Choice Program] has grown in size over the last five years, it has had a positive and dramatic impact in fostering public school improvement. In that time period, I have observed several reforms in MPS that can be attributed largely to the expansion of school choice options for low-income parents. Here are just a few:

• More Early Childhood Education . . . .
• Expanded Before-School and After-School Programs . . . .
• The Growth of Charter Schools. . . .
• Greater Access to Health Care. . . .

"Although these positive changes did begin to occur when the program was expanded in 1995, the pace of reform has substantially increased in the two years since the injunction was lifted and the choice program became fully operational. During the last year alone, for example, MPS has:"

• Sought to encourage parents of young children to attend public school by promising in radio ads that the district will hire private tutors if students are not able to read at grade level by the third grade.
• Permitted a dozen schools to hire teachers outside the seniority system that stymies reform.
• Responded to longstanding requests by parents for more new schools that specialize in such popular programs as Montessori.

"Moreover, last April, Milwaukee voters elected a slate of reform candidates to the MPS board who believe that parents deserve options. All of these actions suggest that MPS realizes that it can no longer take parents for granted."

"Carol Innerst's comprehensive study of how Florida school districts have responded to the Opportunity Scholarship program makes a valuable contribution by reinforcing what we in Milwaukee already have learned: providing parents with additional options increases the responsiveness and accountability of public schools, and serves as a crucial impetus for public school reform. For this reason, Innerst's report should be read by everyone interested in improving the quality of educational opportunities available to our nation's economically disadvantaged children."

The Harvard Study Showing Student Improvements.

A 1997 Harvard University report on the Milwaukee voucher program showed similar results. That report, entitled "Effectiveness of School Choice: The Milwaukee Experiment" (by Jay P. Greene, Center for Public Policy University of Houston, Paul E. Peterson, Program on Education Policy and Governance, John F. Kennedy School of Government and Department of Government, Harvard University, and Jiangtao Du Department of Statistics, Harvard University) compared the standarzized test scores of children who were randomly selected for the voucher program with a control group of other children who applied and qualified but were not randomly selected. The report noted that in math, there was no significant difference during the first two years. However, voucher students scored 5 percentile points higher than the control group after three years and 10.7 points higher after four years. Similarly, in reading, the voucher children scored 2 to 3 percentile points higher for the first three years and 5.8 percentile points higher in the fourth year. These results are all statistically significant. Voucher students did better than their counterparts in both math and reading, and this gap increased over time. The following tables (showing the raw data, not the percentile improvements) from the report shows these results:

Mathematics

Reading

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