School choice slandered - Milwaukee Parental Choice Program

Public Interest, Fall, 1994 by Daniel McGroarty

Three years later, the circumstances surrounding Witte's appointment or his prior opinions on choice are seldom mentioned by those who cite his work. Indeed, Witte's selection by Grover and public skepticism about vouchers often are airbrushed out of the picture. Shanker, in the same January 1994 column in which he cites Witte to criticize the Milwaukee program, warns about so-called "independent" evaluations. In this case, he cites a charter school program in which the interested parties--"the ones who have the most to lose from an unfavorable evaluation--have to approve the evaluator." On the look-out for biases in his opponents' approach, Shanker's antennae are less attuned when the subject is a study he himself favors; the only difference in the Witte appointment is that Superintendent Grover's risk was a positive evaluation of a program he was determined to destroy.

If Shanker contracts a case of amnesia on the matter of Witte's prior opinions and appointment, the Carnegie report goes him one better, referring to "Professor Witte, a self-described choice advocate...." Whatever Carnegie was up to, few others would describe Witte that way.

Accentuate the negative

Shanker not only quotes from but even flacks Witte's Third Year Report, including the address for anyone interested in purchasing a copy at the bottom of his "Where We Stand" column. Yet Shanker may be banking on the fact that few readers will be inspired to send away for, much less read, the Witte report. If they did, they'd find the surprising fact that Witte's reports have not been so critical as alleged. While his findings remain remarkably constant, his inferences in many respects grow more favorable to Milwaukee's Parental Choice Program.

Witte's findings fall into three groups, each handled in a different way by choice critics: (1) his negative findings have been headlined and hyped; (2) his cautions and caveats unheeded; and (3) his positive findings ignored.

Consider the following key criticisms that prove upon closer examination to be questionable--many of which Witte modifies or qualifies in subsequent reports--which form the basis of choice critics' assault on the Milwaukee program.

Attrition from Parental Choice is high. This criticism, while at first glance seemingly peripheral, is potentially damning. How can school choice advocates defend a program if parents pull their kids out of it? Like canaries in a coal mine, parents can be counted on to serve as an early warning system for programs in distress. This proved to be a key line of attack in the 1992 Carnegie Report, which ostensibly proved parents do not really want school choice, and seldom use it when available. So what of Witte's attrition assertion? Is there a large exodus out of the Milwaukee program?

The short answer is no. To the extent the allegation of high attrition is valid at all, it is as true or truer for public schools as choice schools; to the extent it implies parents voting with their feet against choice, the data proves nothing of the sort. Indeed, a case could be made that Parental Choice has lower attrition than the background central-city rate.