School choice slandered - Milwaukee Parental Choice Program

Public Interest, Fall, 1994 by Daniel McGroarty

THE WAR OVER private school choice is entering what might be called a paradoxical phase. As the number of cities and states debating some variant of vouchers proliferates, hard evidence of vouchers' effect rides on the outcome of an experiment limited thus far to 1 percent of the student population in just one city.

The focus of this intense interest is the four-year-old Milwaukee Parental Choice Program, the political progeny of welfare mother turned state legislator Polly Williams, now nationally known as a school choice pioneer.

There is no one-size-fits-all approach to private school choice. Some proposed programs would extend vouchers to all students, regardless of family income or present enrollment in private and even religious schools; others are more tightly focused, targeted to help low-income families, with eligibility of students whose private-school enrollment predates the voucher plan either phased-in over several years or prohibited altogether.

Milwaukee's program falls on the targeted end of the spectrum. It is means-tested. Eligible families can have incomes no higher than 175 percent of the poverty level, a condition met by a majority of families with children in the Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS). Only children enrolled in public schools or entering kindergarten can receive vouchers; children already enrolled in private schools are not eligible. Choice students receive vouchers--for 1993-1994, worth just over $2,900, the state's share of Milwaukee's per pupil expenditure--accepted as tuition in full at one of twelve private non-sectarian schools located within Milwaukee city limits.

The number of children in the Choice program has grown each year, from 341 in 1990-1991, to 733 in 1993-1994; beginning September 1994, the state legislature has authorized the cap on the program to rise to 1.5 percent of Milwaukee's 100,000 school-aged population, or 1500 students. Choice schools must limit voucher students to 49 percent of their student body (65 percent beginning in 1994-1995), further limiting the number of "seats" available. In the four years since its inception, the lack of space has resulted in more children being turned away than have been accepted into the program. As a result, spaces are apportioned by lottery.

Despite its small size and short duration, Milwaukee's Parental Choice Program is radical in one sense: it remains the United States' only publicly-financed private school choice experiment (one was begun in Puerto Rico in 1993 but was ruled unconstitutional in April 1994; a group of parents has petitioned the Puerto Rican Supreme Court on appeal). Indeed, while the low-income families participating in the Parental Choice Program are largely oblivious to the fact, their children's novel education experience frequently figures into referenda wars and legislative battles far beyond Milwaukee's impoverished Near North Side. Success or failure, Milwaukee's micro-program will have an outsized impact on the national education voucher debate.

With all that hinges on the Milwaukee experiment, we might expect to discover teams of researchers roaming the halls of Choice schools. The reality is far different. Most of the opinions on Milwaukee, and a majority of the criticism, amount to "received wisdom," borrowed from the studies of one man: John F. Witte, professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and state-selected outside evaluator of the Parental Choice Program. From the publication of Witte's First Year Report in November 1991 to his most recent in December 1993, the public education establishment has drawn from his data ammunition in its campaign against school choice.

Echo effect

The result is a sort of echo effect. What appears to be a chorus of voucher critics amounts, upon examination, to a kind of scholarly ventriloquism. Commentators who share a common antipathy toward vouchers parrot the partial findings of one examiner.

The oft-quoted 1992 Carnegie Foundation Special Report on School Choice provides a case in point. Released one week before the 1992 Presidential election, Carnegie's findings, harshly critical of vouchers in general and Milwaukee in particular, played page one in the New York Times. On Milwaukee, Carnegie was categorical: "Milwaukee's plan has failed to demonstrate that vouchers can, in and of themselves, spark school improvement...." And, "Inflated promises have outdistanced reality in Milwaukee." Carnegie's chapter on the Milwaukee voucher program leans heavily on Witte, citing him in six of thirteen footnotes.

The echo effect becomes evident later. In April 1994, as Texas gears up for a 1995 voucher battle, the Texas State Teachers Association (TSTA) and the National Education Association (NEA) put out a report called "Our Public Schools: The Best Choice for Texas." Witte, identified as an independent evaluator, is quoted in the TSTA/NEA report in a chapter entitled "The Hollow Promise of Vouchers: The Failed Milwaukee Experiment." A few pages later, to add ballast to TSTA/NEA's anti-voucher argument, Witte's criticism is backed up by the influential Carnegie School Choice study; no mention is made of Carnegie's reliance on Witte. Having achieved a certain "hall of mirrors" effect, the Texas report concludes: "There is only one publicly funded voucher program in operation. It is confined to the Milwaukee, Wisconsin school system and by all accounts, after four years, it is a dismal failure."