Browsing: School Choice

One of the few things that all Americans agree on about education is that it must improve. How, specifically? There we differ.

Newsmakers Host Lisa Pugh sits down with Wisconsin Association of School Boards Director of Government Relations Dan Rossmiller and Badger Institute consultant and member of the Wisconsin Coalition for Education Freedom, Jim Bender, for a discussion on the state of schools.

Chershanta Smith can’t imagine her daughter, Gabrielle, attending school anywhere other than St. Marcus Lutheran School in Milwaukee’s Brewer’s Hill neighborhood. And that’s not only because she believes her daughter is receiving an excellent education at St. Marcus through the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program, but because the school’s community has embraced and supported her entire family.

At the start of the pandemic in 2020, Wishkub Kinepoway faced two family crises with some crying, some praying and a lot of determination. A member of the Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa Indians and a Shawano County transplant, Kinepoway knew she needed to make a change for her children. She also knew that change wouldn’t come without school choice.

The Badger Institute has been a champion of school choice since our inception as the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute in the late 1980s.

Elita Williams is grateful for the opportunity to select the best schools for her kids.

A Milwaukee mom’s take on why more parents need educational choice.

If schools want to impose belief systems on students, parents should have the right to choose their schools.

In response to falling standards, former Mequon-Thiensville school board member launches charter school

In response to falling standards, former Mequon-Thiensville school board member launches charter school

Tax data shows which state universities better promote graduates’ upward mobility

Carmen Bell gives high marks to the Milwaukee high school that her daughter Naomi graduated from last year. Ask why, and she starts with phrases you’ve heard before.

An open embrace of spiritual values in choice schools builds better citizens

There is never one cure-all for complex societal problems like poverty or morally, economically and emotionally untethered children. The first thing is to recognize the problem for what it is. The numbers make that easy.

In Burlington, as elsewhere, families wake up to a revolution being inflicted on children.

The polling shows more and more parents want that opportunity for their kids – and more and more other Wisconsinites believe the right thing to do is to give it to them now.

Principal Julieane Cook of St. Martini Lutheran School on Milwaukee’s south side takes time out twice a day from her administrative duties for “sensory breaks” – where she works with special needs students because no additional staff or resources are available. Private school principals and administrators say in a Badger Institute survey that many special needs children in private schools are left behind because of inequitable allocation of federal resources. Click on the News tab at the top of the page to read the story.

Special needs students are left behind because of inequitable allocation of federal resources, administrators say in survey

“My family wanted private schools because private schools take education seriously. They offer a more rich education and prepare me for my future,” said Sahara Aden, of Milwaukee. But her family couldn’t afford the steep tuition.

The special education voucher program will help a small but deserving group of kids who repeatedly have been denied the opportunities available to their non-disabled peers.