Opponents of school vouchers are using Milwaukee Parental Choice Program as an example of the “failure” of vouchers to deliver a high-quality education. Has the Milwaukee voucher program been a failure, as many public school advocates believe? I’ll pass along this quote from an op-ed by Patrick Wolf and John Witte:
First, students participating in the Milwaukee Parental Choice (“voucher”) Program graduated from high school and both enrolled and persisted in four-year colleges at rates that were four to seven percentage points higher than a carefully matched set of students in Milwaukee Public Schools. Using the most conservative 4% voucher advantage from our study, that means that the 801 students in ninth grade in the voucher program in 2006 included 32 extra graduates who wouldn’t have completed high school and gone to college if they had instead been required to attend MPS.
Second, the addition of a high-stakes accountability testing requirement to the voucher program in 2010 resulted in a solid increase in voucher student test scores, leaving the voucher students with significantly higher achievement gains in reading than their matched MPS peers. …
Third, some types of independent public charter schools in Milwaukee are delivering positive value-added results to their students compared to similar students in MPS. Students in public charter schools that had converted from being private schools in the voucher program showed reading gains that were significantly higher than those of matched MPS students. Overall, the student achievement gains for all independent charter school students were higher than those of similar MPS students, but the differences were not statistically significant.
The research study referenced above, “The Comprehensive Longitudinal Evaluation of the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program,” is available here.
