School choice in Milwaukee - school-voucher plan

Public Interest, Fall, 1996 by Paul E. Peterson, Jay P. Greene, Chad Noyes

To object to compromise is to question a great American political craft. The Constitution could not have been written without compromising the differences between the large and small states. The Missouri Compromise postponed the Civil War for 40 years. In the words of its architect, Henry Clay, "All legislation, all government, all society is founded upon the principle of mutual concession." Yet, when it comes to institutional reform, the embrace of compromise can be the kiss of death. The poisonous recipe is as follows: Take a savory reform proposal, listen to those with no appetite for change, leave out the ingredients that give it spice, then immediately subject the reform to a double-blind taste test.

The more dramatic the departure from the past a reform proposal takes, the more tempting for legislatures to kill it with compromise. Threatened interests usually can exercise a veto at one legislative stage or another. To forestall such opposition, and to avoid defeat, proposals are softened. The result is a law that departs only marginally from past practice. Only if the original concept has great potential can it avoid vitiation.

Compromise is particularly dangerous, given the current rush to evaluate innovations before they have hardly begun. The science of evaluation cut its baby teeth either on well-established institutions or well-financed innovations. It attracted the country's leading scholars, who conducted their research with meticulous care. James S. Coleman's study of school effectiveness looked at a school system that had matured over the course of a century. When the negative income tax was evaluated, the study carefully examined both small-scale and large-scale versions of the proposal. The long-term benefits of early childhood education were ascertained by looking at the well-designed, handsomely funded Perry Preschool Program.

Evaluations are no longer reserved for such august occasions. Today, any innovation must be evaluated immediately if it is to be taken seriously. Massachusetts's recently enacted cross-district, public-school choice program is already undergoing evaluation. The Edison Project's profit-seeking venture into elementary education has received excellent reviews one year into its operations, but its credibility depends on the results from test-score data now being analyzed by the Educational Testing Service.

Yet nothing better illustrates the politics of evaluated compromise than the current debate over the Milwaukee school-voucher plan. A highly compromised choice plan, subjected to an immediate, if inept evaluation by John Witte, a professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, is said to provide proof that vouchers are a failure. But a more careful look at the evidence indicates that the program, though subject to Draconian compromises, has succeeded nonetheless.

The historical context

A generation ago, education was one of the "apple pie" issues of state politics. The two major parties fell over one another in their support for public education. But, in recent times, education issues have become politically divisive. Many Republican leaders have criticized public schools for falling standards and rising costs. They have called for a variety of educational reforms, ranging from national standards and merit pay to charter schools and voucher plans. Meanwhile, Democrats have formed close ties to teacher organizations. In 1994, the political-action committee of the National Education Association (NEA) donated 98.7 percent of its campaign contributions to Democratic candidates.

Nowhere have the politics of education changed more dramatically than in the state of Wisconsin. The state has long been proud of its tradition of public education. In 1989, Wisconsin spent more dollars per student on education than all but six other states; on elementary and secondary education, it ranked tenth. Its average eighth grader scored higher on a 1990 mathematics test than the students of all but five other states. But Wisconsinites have become increasingly uneasy about student educational progress. The curriculum has become more flabby, and student test performances have begun to slip. The problems in Milwaukee have been particularly severe. Though its per-pupil expenditures in constant dollars increased by 82 percent between 1973 and 1993, its graduation rate dropped from 79 percent to 44 percent. Its high-school drop-out rate is four times the national average and the highest among the nation's largest cities.

To address these problems, Tommy Thompson, the popular Republican governor, has championed vouchers and a broad range of other innovations. Meanwhile, the Democratic party, in control of the legislature prior to 1993, blocked many of Thompson's proposals, much to the satisfaction of the Wisconsin Educational Association Committee (WEAC).

The Milwaukee voucher idea might have died altogether had it not dovetailed with the interests of several black leaders in Milwaukee, who had been asking the legislature to carve an all-black public-school system out of a portion of the existing Milwaukee school district. When this suggestion fell on deaf ears, Annette "Polly" Williams, a state representative from an inner-city Milwaukee neighborhood, proposed school choice as an alternative. The city newspapers, the Journal and the Sentinel, opposed the scheme, but it won the spirited support of the Community Journal, a paper serving the African-American community. Thus began an unusual alliance of minority groups and conservative Republicans.