Barbara Miner is a veteran journalist and photographer who has been writing about education and Milwaukee for many years. Her most recent book tells the history of public education in Milwaukee: Lessons from the Heartland: A Turbulent Half-Century of Public Education in an Iconic American City.
In this blog, she explains the history of vouchers in Milwaukee.
Milwaukee is the poster district for vouchers because that city has had vouchers since 1990. Advocates talked on and on about “saving poor kids from failing schools,” so imagine what a surprise it was when the voucher schools took the state tests in 2012–twenty years after the initiation of vouchers–and the scores of poor children were the same in voucher schools as in public schools–but actually worse in math.
Miner writes: “After more than 20 years, one of the clearest lessons from Milwaukee is that vouchers, above all, are a way to funnel public tax dollars out of public schools and into private schools. Vouchers, at their core, are an abandonment of public education.”
Some of their original champions in the black community, like Polly Williams, feel betrayed. Others, like Howard Fuller, have gone on to run an organization (Black Alliance for Educational Options) that is handsomely funded by rightwing foundations to persuade black parents that their children will be “saved” if they abandon public education for vouchers.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
“. . . the scores of poor children were the same in voucher schools as in public schools. . .”
As long as people continue to use “scores”, meaning state mandated standardized tests, as supposed indicators of the quality/effectiveness of a school the edudeformers will continue to “win” in the fight to get rid of public education. I understand using their own “metrics” to counter their claims but we must insist on using valid claims backed by solid reasoning and facts to “blow up” the edudeformers edifice.
Yes, Barbara is a real education hero. In addition, these voucher schools have failed to accept children with disabilities, and the Wis. Dept. of Public Instruction continues to ignore a USDOJ directive to remedy that problem, as I wrote in this blog. http://systemschangeconsulting.wordpress.com/2013/05/17/defending-the-civil-rights-of-children-with-disabilities-in-voucher-schools/
I would like to see the results of the children who used vouchers. Forget the test scores. Where are they now? Did the use of vouchers help them to succeed in life after school? How did they fare against those that stayed in the public schools. Where these children successful anyway regardless of where they went to school? There are many levels of success. Scores might have been low, but the children went on to become successful adults.
Great question Bill! I attended an all-girls Catholic high school in Milwaukee between 1991 and 1995 and many of my classmates attended with vouchers. Some came from public schools, yes. Others were “bad girls”. Some were simply low income and were it not for vouchers wouldn’t’ve had a chance to attend private school.
A lof of parents of girls at my school (voucher use or not) were under the mistaken impression that if they can simply get their kid into a single sex school run by Catholic nuns, their girls would get a better education and be safer.
Come graduation day, we had what ANY OTHER high school had – some girls were already mothers, some barely graduated , some were college ready and some weren’t, some had more scholarship money than they even needed, etc.
At the end of the day, the school you attend is only ONE FACTOR in how a student turns out.
I think the push to put in and expand vouchers was inevitable, and we’ll be seeing more and more of them.
Once you redefine “public schools” to mean “any school that is publicly-funded” it’s predictable that publicly-funded private schools would come next. It really doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to exclude private schools once market based public education is adopted and “choice” becomes the over-riding goal. It doesn’t really matter how the schools perform, either. “Choice” was the goal, after all. That goal is met the moment the voucher goes in.
There’s a political angle, too. Religious schools have been big backers of market-based reform and a politician like Governor Walker has a religious “base”. If they’re losing students to charter schools, as they are in Philadelphia for example, they will demand (and get) public funding for their private schools.
It’s an interesting political and marketing dilemma for liberal and Democratic reformers, because they have always insisted they “draw the line” at public funding of private schools. They won’t be able to do that, and they should have anticipated they wouldn’t be able to do that.
I’m mildly curious how they plan to sell vouchers to their liberal and Democratic base, and how Democrats plan to differentiate themselves from Walker and Jindal and other hard Right Republicans on education once they (inevitably) cave to vouchers.
“twenty years after the initiation of vouchers–and the scores of poor children were the same in voucher schools as in public schools–but actually worse in math.”
As I found out in talking to reformers in Ohio about cybercharters, it doesn’t matter how the schools perform.
They simply switch arguments. They go from the goal being “excellence” to the goal being “choice”. The question then becomes not are the privatized or private schools better than public schools, but did the parents CHOOSE the privatized or private school.
So they got us coming and going, Diane. They have an argument in the alternative in their back pocket, and it’s “choice”.
Market-based reform literally CANNOT fail.
If it fails on excellence then it passes muster on parental choice. It’s just a matter of moving the goalpost 🙂
I’d call it a matter of being duplicitous.
“I’d call it a matter of being duplicitous.”
You could, but when they try to close a failing Ohio charter, reformers drop the “excellence” goal real quick, and move either to “choice” or they claim there is something unique or valuable about the school besides test scores, which is just a variant of “choice”.
Ironically enough, “unique or valuable” is what public school parents in Chicago argued to reformers when reformers closed public schools 🙂
I just haven’t seen “‘the schools are the same or worse” argument actually matter in reform. They expand “reform” anyway. If not “excellence”, it’s choice, and if not choice, it’s “unique and valuable.”
Exactly,
From MW online: Definition of DUPLICITOUS: marked by duplicity: deceptive in words or action
i have seen the same argument Chiara, movign the goal from “excellence” to “choice”. Ultimately, the market folks don’t care about excellence. All the choices could be crap, but by golly they are still choices and that is all that seems to matter to the market crowd.
Sadly true, but as an atheist taxpayer…what about my “choice” to not pay for the teaching of religion in schools. I also don’t have children but I would never dream of asking for the “choice” of not paying for the education of someone else’s child but I want it to be at a public entity where teachers are certified.
All very well if Catholics were given the option of NOT paying for contraception and abortion in health care policies offered by Catholic institutions. Better to call atheism an alternate religion and keep the freedom of religion. If you accept that premise, then “Atheists” have to obey the law same as the rest of us.
Chiara, Duane Swacker, and Chris: I agree that they constantly move the goal posts to their own advantage—no matter how obviously contradictory and self-serving that makes them—but the leading charterites/privatizers seem genuinely surprised when we point that out. And they think they can do slogan musical chairs indefinitely.
Nonetheless, they have an obvious Achilles Heel. The recent dust up between California and the Secretary of Education over foregoing for a short while a bit of testing nonsense makes it clear that the education establishment cannot do without the scores generated by high-stakes standardized tests. The false equivalence between the scores and teacher effectiveness/student learning/school quality is the very lifeblood of their critique.
LATimes, 9-10-13, “For top California officials, the issue is about shifting quickly to new computerized standardized tests that will be based on learning goals, called the Common Core standards, adopted by 45 states. But under that plan, no tests scores would be released this year for students, schools or school districts.
In a statement this week, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan objected strongly to that provision. He said parents need to know how students and schools are doing and that federal rules require that. Test scores therefore are necessary.
Duncan added that he was willing to withhold federal funds should California go forward as intended. He didn’t specify how far he would go, but these dollars make up about 10% of school district budgets. In L.A. Unified, for example, the money adds up to about $600 million annually.”
Link: http://www.latimes.com/local/la-me-state-tests-20130911,0,6328045.story
You can’t club people without a club. So they borrow from the arguments of their fiercest critics even when they undercut their own most sacred Holy Edumetrics.
If it weren’t for blogs like this, and other forums, they could get away with this forever.
Unfortunately for them, they are being increasingly asked to walk their own talk.
Their weakness in argumentation is due to their blind adherence to a well known Marxist precept:
“The secret of life is honesty and fair dealing. If you can fake that, you’ve got it made.”
Oops! Did you think I meant Karl? Sorry.
Groucho.
🙂
Why not start from the basic premise that our country has an obligation to provide a quality education to all children? Full stop. I understand the problems with vouchers but I’d really like to know what parents who say “no” to the current situation are supposed to do if they don’t have the resources to fund an alternative? The tidal wave of faddish quick fixes has re-made almost every public school “option” out there into something many of us don’t recognize and won’t support. Public school kindergartens are increasingly developmentally inappropriate and the unequal resourcing of schools places 5 year olds and their parents in competition with each other for the most resourced schools at a time when they should be building community. In my major city, I’ve never lived on a street where there were two children going to the same school. Something is very wrong with this system.
In the long run I am optimistic that the current “reform” trends will self-implode but I see no reason to believe that it will happen in time for my kids. Educational policy changes are slow while childhood goes by so fast. I get really angry when people view our children being in private school as a “choice” no more significant than our choice of toothpaste. Chacun a son gout, right? My children didn’t leave their public school, their public school left them.