Milwaukee: Voucher Graduates

The success of Milwaukee's voucher school graduates is getting some national attention today in the Wall Street Journal.

President Obama's fiscal 2011 budget calls for a 9% increase in federal education spending, and he has famously said that the money should go to "what works" in education. So he ought to take another look at Milwaukee, where the nation's oldest and largest publicly funded school voucher program is showing academic gains.

A report released last week by School Choice Wisconsin, an advocacy group, finds that between 2003 and 2008 students in the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program had a significantly higher graduation rate than students in Milwaukee Public Schools.

"Had MPS graduation rates equalled those for MPCP students in the classes of 2003 through 2008, the number of MPS graduates would have been about 18 percent higher," writes John Robert Warren of the University of Minnesota. "That higher rate would have resulted in 3,352 more MPS graduates during the 2003-2008 years."

In 2008 the graduation rate for voucher students was 77% versus 65% for the nonvoucher students, though the latter receives $14,000 per pupil in taxpayer support, or more than double the $6,400 per pupil that voucher students receive in public funding.

The Milwaukee voucher program serves more than 21,000 children in 111 private schools, so nearly 20% more graduates mean a lot fewer kids destined for failure without the credential of a high school diploma. The finding is all the more significant because students who receive vouchers must, by law, come from low-income families, while their counterparts in public schools come from a broader range of economic backgrounds.

...The Milwaukee program has survived for 20 years despite ferocious political opposition, and it would have died long ago if parents didn't believe their children were better off for it.

In spite of the fact that Milwaukee's School Choice program works, Democrats try to undercut it at every turn.

This makes absolutely no sense IF the Democrats are really interested in doing "what works" to help kids succeed, as Obama claims.

Obama's 2011 budget includes a 9 percent increase in federal education spending. Will that increased federal spending, OUR tax dollars, be applied to programs that work, like the one in Milwaukee?

What a ridiculous question!

The sad fact is the Dems don't care about educating kids and preparing them for a promising future. They care about doing what they need to do politically, appeasing the teachers' unions.

That's a disgrace. The Dems and the teachers' unions are playing political games to benefit themselves. Obviously, if they were striving to educate kids and give them opportunity and hope for a better life, they wouldn't be blocking School Choice. They'd be expanding it.

When the report that the Wall Street Journal cites was discussed last week in The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, the findings weren't touted as the revelation of a successful strategy to better educate children and a victory for students. Instead, the focus was on the reaction of Milwaukee Public School officials and how the study was flawed. It's validity was questioned.

MPS officials, however, question the accuracy of the study's methodology and point out that because the names of the schools analyzed are withheld, it's difficult to tell if similar schools are being compared in both groups.

The study was funded by the voucher-advocacy group School Choice Wisconsin but conducted by John Robert Warren, a sociology professor at the University of Minnesota who has been researching high school graduation rates for about 10 years. More than 21,000 students in Milwaukee are using vouchers to attend about 110 private schools in the city.

For 2007-'08, Warren estimated the graduation rate in voucher schools to be 77%, and the graduation rate in MPS to be 65%, a difference of 12 percentage points. The information includes comparisons between seven choice schools and 23 public high schools that could provide complete data for all six years studied, and adjusted to account for an expected 5% ninth-grade retention rate in choice schools and an expected 25% ninth-grade retention rate in MPS.

Warren said the new data shows a continuation of a pattern in which voucher students graduated at a higher rate than MPS students in every year except 2003-'04. Warren's previous report on the issue included data up to the 2006-'07 school year.

Warren said the study did not prove that voucher schools caused those students to graduate.

"We still don't know whether it's going to the voucher school that causes you to be more likely to graduate, or if it's something about the kinds of families that send their kids to voucher schools would make them more likely to graduate," he said.

According to the most recent data available, MPS reported a 68.3% graduation rate in 2007-'08.

MPS spokeswoman Roseann St. Aubin said the district knows it has "work to do" when it comes to increasing graduation rates at the high schools.

But she questioned the validity of the study because of Warren's method for calculating the graduation rates - by comparing the number of high school graduates in the spring of one calendar year to the number of enrolled ninth-graders four years prior, then estimating a likely percentage that had been retained in ninth grade in both MPS and choice schools.

"You have to take into account things like mortality, and the number of students who move to another school," St. Aubin said.

"Mortality"?

How many students in MPS are dying? So many that it would alter the graduation rate percentage?

...St. Aubin also questioned why Warren's reports on the graduation rates do not identify the schools examined. For example, she said, the report's methodology says it includes information received from MPS partnership high schools, which are traditionally populated by students who are at risk of dropping out or facing challenging circumstances.

"Is it apples to apples here?" St. Aubin asked. "Are we comparing schools with the same kind of programs?"

Warren said individual school data was not identified because the graduation rate averages across schools in a particular system provided a clearer picture.

It's fair to examine a study's methodology. There's nothing wrong with questioning it. I think it's wise to be wary of numbers. It's a good idea to take a closer look.

My problem is that the response by MPS and lib outlets like the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel is so predictable. The reaction is always the same. No matter what the evidence or how promising the findings, School Choice is attacked. It may look effective but it's not.

So, although the Wall Street Journal highlights the success of Milwaukee's School Choice program and holds it up as an example for the rest of the nation, the city should take no pride in that. According to MPS and the JS, the success doesn't exist. It's not real.

Let's not pretend that MPS, the teachers' unions, and other School Choice opponents have the best interests of the students at heart.

As the WSJ points out, "Vouchers are of course taboo among most Democrats, and Mr. Obama has done nothing to stop Congress from killing the small but successful voucher program for poor families in Washington, D.C."

That's pathetic.

Hope?

Yeah, right.