During his campaign, President Donald Trump proposed using $20 billion in federal funds to expand charter and private school voucher options for low-income students. If his pick for education secretary is confirmed, the plan could get a big push.
That pick is Betsy DeVos, who has a track record of using her wealth and political influence to expand voucher programs, which use taxpayer funds to enable public-school students to attend private schools. But education experts argue the current school-choice movement significantly differs from the original vision for vouchers.
Milwaukee, which has long been at the forefront of the private school choice movement since it launched 26 years ago, could be a perfect case study of that contrast. Thanks in part to a year-long fellowship, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel education reporter Erin Richards had the opportunity to do some in-depth reporting about the history of vouchers in the city and how that might provide lessons for the future.
From the very beginning, Milwaukee's voucher school system was pitched as a great equalizer, providing low-income students in predominantly African-American neighborhoods public dollars to attend high-performing private schools.
That sounds good in theory, said Richards, but it doesn't always play out that way in practice. She pointed to Marquette University High School and Divine Savior Holy Angels High School in Milwaukee as examples of high-performing private schools that are technically considered vouchers because they do accept a small number of students who receive taxpayer funding for their tuition.
"And I think when you look at the outcomes at those schools, I think the kids that are on vouchers there are getting a really top notch education. But that isn't what happened with the program," Richards said.
In other words, those high-performing schools are only educating a small number of voucher students while many others are stuck in institutions that, in some cases, have administrators who bought fancy cars and bloated salaries, where there are scant overall resources and teachers with little experience – sometimes not even a bachelor's degree. That was especially true in the early years of the voucher program, Richards said.
"I think that the number of private schools today that receive money in the form of vouchers in Milwaukee that are operating at this poor a level, I think there's a small segment of them. And if you ask around the community, from left to right, most people know which schools they are," Richards said. "The problem is in many cases (the schools) not doing anything wrong by the letter of the law."
After 26 years of voucher schools in Milwaukee, oversight and other accountability measures that would help protect against this kind of abuse are still lacking, said Richards. Private schools that receive public funding for vouchers are not required to publish high school graduation rates.
"That's a pretty basic outcome measure that I think most people would be interested in knowing about these private schools, and we just don't have that yet," Richards said, adding many states have installed that mechanism.
While her reporting tracked the abuses in the private school voucher program, Richards said she understands school choice advocates who say a similar kind of negligence is going on in Milwaukee Public Schools, where some schools have perpetually failed to meet the state standards.
"And there isn't a lot being done at the moment to try to put in place policies or interventions that would have a significant impact on lifting the achievement on some of those really low performing, and longtime low performing, buildings as well," Richards said.
Richards added the critical question behind the reform movement becomes how states that invest public dollars in vouchers for private schools can guarantee that students will receive a quality education and what kind of oversight measures can be installed to ensure that's the case.
