46% of State’s Private School Students Get Vouchers

School classroom. (Pixabay License).

A new analysis by Wisconsin Watch documents the remarkable rise in the number of Wisconsin students using taxpayer-funded vouchers to attend private schools.

“When it launched in 1990, the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program, the nation’s first modern private school voucher program, included just 300 students at seven secular private schools,” at a cost of $700,000, the story noted. Since then Republican laws have steadily expanded the eligibility and per-student payments of vouchers, with the biggest change being the inclusion of religious schools. By 2025 almost half  “(46%) of all private school students in Wisconsin received vouchers across the state’s four programs. Taxpayers this school year will spend more than $700 million to defray tuition costs for about 60,000 students….”

“Taxpayers through school district budgets provide $10,877 for each K–8 voucher student and $13,371 for each voucher student in grades 9-12 who enrolls in one of the three voucher programs. Each student who participates in the Special Needs Scholarship Program receives $16,049. Those amounts will increase by 4%, 3.2% and 2.6% respectively next school year.”

The program has essentially become a religious one, with almost all voucher students (about 96%) attending religiously affiliated schools, the data shows. The program has saved many private schools from losing enrollment and possibly closing, with 56% of all private schools in the state now accepting voucher students, the data shows. “Wisconsin private schools gained 1,687 students from 2011 to 2024, a stark contrast to public schools, where enrollment declined by more than 65,000 students.”

Many of the new voucher students attended a private school before getting a voucher. This year, one in four (1,129) newly enrolled students in the main voucher program, the Wisconsin Parental Choice Program, came from private schools.

As the program has expanded and required more state funding, it has left less money for public schools. Wisconsin’s funding of public schools has been flat in real dollars for the last two decades, even as funding in other states increased, a report by the Wisconsin Policy Forum concluded. Wisconsin ranked 11th in school funding in 2002, but that declined to 26th by 2023.

The Wisconsin Association of School Business Officials has warned that Wisconsin is moving toward the creation of two school systems. It cited the example of Florida, where its second school system, a universal voucher program, now costs $3.9 billion per year, and Arizona, where its universal voucher program was originally estimated to cost $33 million and passed the $1 billion mark last year, “with no clear estimate of how much larger the program could grow…Already ranked 49th in the nation on per pupil spending on public education, Arizona has been forced to make significant cuts to public schools and many other essential state programs.”

Meanwhile, voucher supporters and opponents continue to argue whether school choice results in better-educated students. Voucher advocate School Choice Wisconsin declares that “The most recent results show that voucher students outperformed low-income public school students on 29 of 30 measures.”

But Wisconsin Watch pointed to “an analysis of 92 studies on school choice students’ academic achievements published between 1992 and 2015” that “found a very slight rise in standardized test scores among students who transferred from public schools to voucher schools, according to Huriya Jabbar, an associate professor at the University of Southern California.”

Statewide support for vouchers is at 54%, a poll last year by Marquette Law School found. But when people were given a choice between increasing state support for students to attend private schools and increasing support for public schools, 71% said they favored increased support for public schools.