Milwaukee has had vouchers since 1990. The program was expanded to include religious schools in 1998. Voucher advocates, led by former superintendent Howard Fuller, insisted that school choice was the best way to raise the woeful academic performance of black students. Fuller, a social worker and one-time advocate for black nationalism, is now head of the pro-choice Black Alliance for Educational Options. Fuller, the one-time radical, has long been subsidized by rightwing foundations, including the Bradley Foundation and the Walton Foundation (and the Gates Foundation). None of the whites who run these foundations have any credibility in black communities, but Fuller is an effective salesman for their segregationist ideas.

In the early days of vouchers and charters, advocates promised that school choice would cause schools to get better by competing for students. School choice would bring about a rising tide that would lift all boats. Public schools would improve, they said, adopting new programs and higher standards to retain their students and beat the competition. John Chubb and Terry Moe published a seminal work in 1990 called “Politics, Markets, and Schools” in which they argued that all reforms of the existing system were doomed to fail because of its democratic governance and the power of the unions; they boldly claimed that school choice is a “panacea.”

That was the same year that Milwaukee first offered vouchers.

For several years, the Milwaukee voucher program was evaluated by opposing groups. Some said it helped students, others said it didn’t. Over time, critics and supporters reached a consensus view. The voucher program overall had no impact on student performance but parents were happier. Although students were not better prepared academically, they had a higher graduation rate, but they had such high attrition rates that the students least likely to graduate had already dropped out or returned to public schools.

Meanwhile, the public schools enrolled far higher proportions of students with disabilities because the voucher schools and charter schools said they could not meet their needs. The choice schools were also able to eliminate students who were disciplinary problems or academically unable and send them back to public schools.

This article portrays the situation in Milwaukee to mark the 25th anniversary of vouchers, in 2014. Nothing has changed since then. The evaluation industry has moved on. The consensus holds: students in voucher schools do not make greater test score gains than those in public schools. Public schools do not improve as a result of competition. Public schools lose funding to voucher schools and charter schools, which makes them less able to compete. Public schools get the students that the private voucher schools don’t want.

Pro-choice evaluators have reached the same conclusions in D.C. and Cleveland. No rising tide.

And this is the failed program that Betsy DeVos wants to spread across the nation. We now know that vouchers do not save poor kids from failing schools. Vouchers have no purpose other than to undermine public schools.