Milwaukee Started National Education Movement
School choice started here, and now has 76 programs in 32 states.
School classroom. (Pixabay License).
Wisconsin has a noteworthy track record among the states that have contributed to national policy. Examples includes its pioneering role in unemployment compensation, workers compensation and Social Security.
The state’s role on the national stage continues. The last three decades have witnessed the national expansion of a movement to expand parent options in choosing schools that their children attend.
A few months ago I spoke with a retired Journal Sentinel reporter and mentioned the substantial impact of the Milwaukee program in the rest of the nation. She was skeptical, in part because the story has been under reported locally. On later receiving substantiation of the kind I offer below, she responded, “Wow.”
As part of National School Choice Week, skyscrapers in cities across the country have flashed messages this week to commemorate the developments. Literally thousands of events are being held thanks to the support provided to the main organizer, Andrew Campenalla. Tonight former Governor Thompson will speak in the Lambeau Field Atrium to school choice supporters from across the state.
Wisconsinites had a big part in taking the idea national. In the late 1990s major philanthropists approached my wife, Susan Mitchell, and asked her to direct an organization aimed at spreading the movement. With help from supporters like Howard Fuller, who in 2000 founded the Black Alliance for Educational Options, the American Education Reform Association reached out to reformers in states across the country.
Results? Seventy-six programs in 32 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico provide K-12 options that did not previously exist. More than 600,000 students participate, benefiting either from a private school voucher, an educational savings account, or a scholarship financed through state tax credits.
The COVID-19 pandemic has been significant in prompting enactment of new programs. More generally, it has spurred a parental awakening among families affected by school closures often pushed by teacher unions.
The outcome of the Virginia gubernatorial election illustrates how that awakening can have profound political results. It’s no accident that one of Republican Rebecca Kleefisch’s first ads highlighted K-12 issues and her goal of making school choice universal. Kevin Nicholson, her opponent in the GOP primary for governor, also calls for universal choice. The contrast between their views and those of Governor Tony Evers could not be starker.
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The tragedy of school choice is its support of religious schools! The courts may allow it but it remains a violation of the separation of church and state! And I say that as someone who spent 40+ years in ministry. Government support offers two possible dangers – one is control and the other favoritism. Either bodes Ill for people of faith or of no faith. Peace, TW
This program was started with the lie as something to help poor inner city children get a good education. After three decades of billion of dollars in State funding, nothing has really changed. The real reason was to create an entitlement for middle class family to leave public schools and enroll in unaccountable choice schools that would promote religious and conservative views of government, the economy and hypocritical morality. The most recent school choice bill being proposed is that any family regardless of income can have the State pay for their child’s religious education in a sectarian school.
I have been in many of the Wisconsin school choice schools in Milwaukee as an outside assessor and as a professional development leader.
While many are well run and have certified teachers and administrators, and a curriculum and resources, some others are severely lacking – principals without school administration experience or teaching experience, no books or resources, few teachers with degrees. Some “teachers” are friends or family members of the principal. I asked one teacher whose classroom was in a dim basement- where she got her lesson ideas, and she said, “I copy something from the internet every night.”
If our legislators continue with their planned choice expansion- and continue to refuse to receive student accountability data from the schools, parents should leave the state because there is little future possibilities for our students here in Wisconsin.
One more thing related to my last comment about “choice schools”. — I am NOT referring to charter schools – they are quite effective on the whole as are some choice schools. But some choice schools should be closed down immediately.
From my point of view the “Parental Choice Program” has from its inception been an effort funded by right wing “philanthropists” who believe that by dividing our citizenry into more easily controlled religious, ethnic and racial camps, they can eventually privatize all american educational systems.
Think of the benefits we’ll derive when their goals are achieved. When we can all select what our kids learn from a tailored menu that disallows dissonant intrusions of inconvenient facts that might be in conflict with our tried and true family values.
Why else would the Kleefisches and Nicholsons of our state be so enthused about “universal choice”? Why else was Donald Trump such an avid fan of privatizing education? Why is Andrew Campanella being celebrated by the US Chamber of Commerce Foundation? Why else would Sen. Darling & Company be proposing doing away with the Milwaukee Public School System?
Might it have something to do with destroying public school teachers unions and the political power they exercise on behalf of providing our children with a fact based education?
It’s a scam, and always have been. These people who complain about Milwaukee never mention that vouchers have been in place in MKE for 30+ years and conditions have backslid, if anything.
This is a welfare handout to religious schools and rich parents from a bunch of people who don’t want creative and critical thinkers to come out of the educational system. They talk about competition, but they HATE having more people get an opportunity if it threatens their chances of coasting into success.
Weird thought – let’s allow Milwaukee to raise its own money through a sales tax, stop extracting the City’s wealth, and make a real effort to reduce poverty in the state’s largest city. I bet it works better than the anti-City stuff we’ve had to put up with over the last 12 years.
You can argue about their success in improving educational outcomes, but there is little doubt their growth is fuel by dissatisfaction with existing public school systems. For many reasons we are living in a time of dissatisfaction, I am not sure this movement can be defused.
Oh brother, more claptrap from “hack-for-hire” George Mitchell. Of course, shilling for privatizers, carrying water for the MMAC and the C of C, and polishing Howard Fuller’s Allen-Edmunds. The Mitchell’s have never met an anti-union pol or foundation they won’t bootlick. Voucher schools are one of the worst scams of the last half century.
The comments here are encouraging. Opponents of letting parents choose help make the case for expansion. Nearly half of Milwaukee parents voluntarily use the various choice programs. Statewide one in five do, a share that will grow dramatically when artificial caps are lifted in a few years. Teacher union-inspired Covid lockdowns have been a boon.