Vouchers are tax funded credits given to parents to select any school they wish for their child to attend. The school may be in the neighborhood; it may be across town. It may be a public, charter or private school. Parents pay taxes for education and get to choose which school would be best for their child.
Milwaukee, Wisconsin Vouchers
School choice has been alive and well in Milwaukee, WI for nearly 20 years. It is the oldest voucher system in the nation. And, it has been very successful. This year, for the first time, a new record of 20,000 students have used their free will in selecting which school they wish to attend.
On the other hand, the public school system has suffered ten years of decline in enrollment and has fallen to 80,000 students. This is the lowest number in ten years. The Milwaukee Public School system has been active in improving its schools and creative in recruiting new students. When schools post test scores and graduation rates, parents often choose the more successful schools.
Recently, Democrats have gained control in the Legislature and want to have regulations that limit the number of vouchers to be allowed. And, Barack Obama is not a supporter of the voucher system. Obama wants to hold public schools more accountable instead. No Child Left Behind has tried to do that but it is a very slow process. What happens to a generation of children while low achieving schools attempt to improve?
But, in Milwaukee the program just keeps growing because parents are happy with the choices offered to them. The Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled that is was legal to include religious schools to be part of the voucher program in 1998.
Voucher Costs
Parents in Wisconsin and in every state pay state taxes. A portion of the state taxes go for educational expenses. Wisconsin pays $6,607 to educate each child K-12. For each child that is in a private or parochial school, the state saves the cost of educating students because private funding takes care of the expenses. What is happening in Wisconsin is the parents that pay taxes are now seeing their taxes educate their child and they choose where that child will attend. In the past, parents that enrolled children in a private school paid twice: once in taxes and a second time in tuition.
The state of Wisconsin estimates that it will pay $128.8 million to 127 schools that are part of the voucher system. Some of the funds will go to public schools, some to charter schools and some to private schools.
The Choices in Education
The high achieving private academies that receive voucher funding may not be able to financially support themselves should vouchers be pulled. If that would happen, these children would enroll in the public schools and the same funding would follow them. Except then, they would be attending low achieving schools for the same money spent. Today, when everyone is looking for more bang for the buck, what sense does it make to pull funding from a successful program to fund an unsuccessful program?
Education is definitely in the middle of change.
Source: Alan J. Borsuk, Journal Sentinel, Nov. 9, 2008.
For complete article, 20,000students now use vouchers
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