A chance for consensus as new study finds school choice is ‘like skipping a grade’ for working-class kids
A rigorous new study showing just how much children benefit from Wisconsin’s parental school choice program raises a key question for Democrats’ new nominee for governor — whether he’ll break from a calibrated neutrality that sounds a lot like indifference.
During a debate before the primary, David Crowley said he would not sign a bill ending or reducing the school choice option by which about 61,000 Wisconsin children are educated, at least not immediately, but said he does not want to see it expand, either.
“I don’t think the question is whether or not we should have vouchers,” said Crowley, who is now the nominee. “The question should be how do we continue to invest in our public schools to make sure that they’re the school of choice.”
A better question — given the results of that study — is why not reassure working-class parents they’ll be able to turn to schools they prefer.
The research compared pairs of students of the same age, same family income and same home language who were from the same part of the state, and, crucially, who had the same initial performance on the state’s Forward exam — and tracked them as one went to a district public school and another to an independent school using a school choice voucher.
The study compared their learning growth via that Forward exam after four years and found that among most Wisconsin children, using school choice put the typical kid 1.15 grade levels ahead of his public school match. In Milwaukee, using school choice for just two years puts a child 1.35 grades ahead of her peer.
The key is time, said the authors, Will Flanders of the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty and economist Scott Niederjohn of Concordia University Wisconsin. The benefit of a stronger school didn’t hit right away but accumulated over several years: “We see a clear stepping up pattern as years of exposure increase,” they wrote in a peer-reviewed version.
“Over the course of four years, we see over a year of additional growth” in one of a pair of kids who in every measurable way started in the same place, Flanders told the Badger Institute. The benefit of school choice is massive: “Essentially, it’s like a kid skipped a grade.”
Such a boost is especially poignant when you realize that these aren’t rich kids. Wisconsin’s choice program is limited to families earning no more than about twice the poverty line in most of the state, or 3 times in Milwaukee or Racine — $63,000 for a single mother with one child, for instance.
The new study uses the same method as the state-mandated School Choice Demonstration Project that wrapped in 2012, before choice went statewide. That study found that in Milwaukee, vouchers meant higher high school graduation rates, and later analysis found it boosted college enrollment and reduced the odds of being arrested as a young adult.
WILL’s study now finds the benefit works elsewhere in Wisconsin, too, where public schools “are three and four and five stars” on the state’s quality measures, said Flanders.
Why such a big benefit? That’s beyond the study. Flanders can speculate: Maybe it’s better discipline. Maybe choice frees a school to try different techniques. What is known now are the results.
Why would anyone want to close off such opportunity? Yet much of Crowley’s party professes such a desire. State Rep. Francesca Hong, who came within a whisker of winning the Democrats’ nomination, repeatedly vowed to “sunset” school choice. Also-ran Kelda Roys, a state senator and the teachers’ union pick for governor, promised the same. Outgoing Gov. Tony Evers has long professed his opposition to school choice, even as the program’s broad popularity protects it.
Crowley talks like he’s threading a needle. He says, of a program that more than 36,200 kids in his own county use, merely that he does not support expanding it but “does not believe it can be eliminated overnight.”
Why not eliminated never? Statewide, only 31 percent of 8th-graders can read at grade level, so parents who can’t afford private school tuition or a house in a high-performing district would appreciate better options. They’re certainly flocking to one: Enrollment in the school choice program has grown by 6.6 percent a year over the past decade even as the number of school-age children falls.
This is what accountability looks like, accountability by schools to parents for whatever priority they deem most important, be it academics, safety or how well a school handles a pandemic.
Critics claim this costs too much, which is absurd: While a typical Wisconsin school district costs taxpayers about $18,400 per pupil each year — or about $23,000 in Milwaukee — taxpayers’ total spend on an 8th-grader’s school choice voucher this past year was $10,877. Crowley shows he may get this when he cites the financial hit of moving 62,000 low-cost kids all at once into high-cost schools as a reason to at least tolerate choice for now.
Why not say openly that he favors what much of Wisconsin wants? No parents and no children benefit from continuing the simmering hostility toward choice of the current administration. If Crowley matched Republican nominee Tom Tiffany’s open support for parental choice, taking the issue off the table, it would reassure parents and extricate kids from the middle of a political war.
Choice’s critics favor a phrase ginned up by teachers’ unions: “Public dollars belong in public schools.” Never mind that such a sentiment cuts out parents’ choices. When getting children into schools puts them more than a full grade farther along, the phrase we can all agree on is, “Education dollars belong in schools that educate.”
Patrick McIlheran is executive editor at the Badger Institute.
This article was updated after the results of the primary election.
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