November
2006
Choice Schools - Is it like Gambling in Wisconsin?
They're all over the place in Milwaukee. Choice schools.
Are they a bad thing? Are they a good thing? I don't know, but it does seem that the incredibly high "cap" on choice schools has pretty much opened them up to whoever wants to go to one.
Choice schools have long earned criticism for mixing church and state and for not having to comply with many of the standards that public schools do, including the fact that they don't have to take disabled or learning disabled children. Public schools are expected to compete despite being forced to operate at higher costs because of state and federal requirements, and because the pool of their student body has a much higher percentage of special needs kids.
Choice schools such as Messmer and Holy Redeemer, have gotten wealthy – to the point where they are able to market themselves – even as public schools have struggled. But at this point, isn't the cat already out of the bag? Does it really matter if we have a cap on choice schools?
It seems a lot like the casino gambling debate of last year. A bunch of Republican lawmakers stood silently by as former governor and fellow Republican, Tommy Thompson, allowed a rapid expansion of casino gambling in Wisconsin. Last year those same legislators expressed shock – yes, shock – that Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle was following the same path that Thompson had forged. But now it's too late to stop casino gambling in Wisconsin. It's already here and it's here to stay. If anyone wants to gamble, they can, just like anyone who wants to attend a choice school can.
In an amazing abuse of power, these same choice schools, which became wealthy from public funds, put up banners and even advertised the slogan "Governor Doyle, Lift the Cap." Where did all that money to run the ad campaign against Doyle come from? Of course it came from state coffers — who else funds choice schools?
They're a mix of church and state and it's all done with our tax dollars. But is the education equivalent or better than public schools? No one knows. Choice school performance has never been measured against state standards.
One thing is certain though — the pool of good students at MPS has dropped somewhat. Many good kids have flocked to choice schools because choice schools don't have to admit the bad seeds. The bad kids end up going to public schools by default and when they eventually fail, be it because of bad parenting or other reasons, their performance stats are attached to public schools. Meanwhile, the choice schools are not even forced to keep stats. This puts public schools at an extreme disadvantage.
The path that public schools are being forced to follow, which includes unequal assessment of where resources should be allocated, is putting public schools in Milwaukee in a death spiral.
Jim McGuigan
Jim McGuigan, Watchdogging Education
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Jim - I am not sure what the answer or solution here is. Having graduated from a choice school, Elim Chrisitan Academy, I feel caught in the middle of this debate. MPS desperately needs to not be seen as a bad choice for a student. I try my hardest to encourage people to give the system a chance, but am forced to admit that my parents sent me to a choice school. The irony of it is that the school I attended has since closed down due to financial problems. Rumor has it that they were trying to admit families who could not really afford it, and the school admitted them anyways on some sort of arrangement, but fell behind on the bills. The church tried to bail the school out, but that only lasted for 4 or 5 years, and then they had to close the doors. In 1987, I did attend South Division for one year, and it was much easier than the Chrisitian school, but I am not sure why. I think it is good for a family to have a choice of where to send their children, but I don’t like the bad rep MPS gets as a result.
As a public school teacher, I can tell you that choice is a good thing. We can sure as heck compete with Choice schools and regularly win the battle. By we, I mean those of us who teach in non-MPS public schools within Milw. county. Through open enrollment we siphon off the “good” kids like crazy–more that Choice schools do.
Its a good thing that programs like open enrollment and choice have brought the market place into education. One way to see the benefit is by studying WKCE scores for LD, ED, and Econ Disadvantaged students in districts surrounding MPS. They’re all creeping up. That’s because people are paying more attention to them now.
Further, the “stats” we keep are to our advantage. They give us tangible information we can show parents as we convince them that our school is better than the Choice school. In truth, most Choice schools keep detailed stats too–for the same reason.
The whole church and state argument is also a non-factor. It is a tired emotional argument that means nothing to people whose only concern is educating children. The same is true regarding special ed. In truth, public schools have the best facilities and skill-sets to meet the needs of these students, but many Choice schools have ample numbers of special ed students.
In the end, Choice isn’t the enemy of MPS or public education. MPS is a structure unable to confront its current challenges; its long dead, but nobody has the guts to scrap it. And as a parent, wouldn’t it be problematic to send your kid to one of these failing schools? Would you send your kid to a school where only 40% of kids would graduate? No. Therefore, we have a responsibility to provide an exit and a choice. This is really a fundamental “progressive” justice issue.
But don’t worry. I’m sure that ten years from now choice schools will be lawyered and regulated to death too. Like the federal government, the state can’t just disperse the money and then let local people make decisions.
There are a few things to remember when considering the choice program and the flawed debates that surround it:
1) There’s no such thing as a 40% graduation rate. This is fiction put out by choice advocates that throws any real debate about what goes on in MPS and what goes on in choice schools in the garbage. The graduation rate at Rufus King and Riverside High Schools is 96% but that never gets reported. The graduation rate at Messmer is about the same, but we hear about that all the time in the choice debate.
2) The free consumer market of education doesn’t exist. With the exception of Milwaukee Rufus King, which scores above most of the suburban schools on 10th Grade WKCE tests, high school scores on the WKCE are directly linked to the median family income within the school’s district. The top six median income communities in Miwaukee County operate six of the top seven WKCE scoring high schools year in, year out. Whitefish Bay, Nicolet, Shorewood, Tosa East, Franklin, Rufus King, Whitnall … Only King is based in a community with a median family income less than $67,000 per year. (Interestingly, the only high school in the state in a community with $60,000 median family income or above that can’t seem to nail those tests is Oak Creek High. Three of the last four years the school was below state average - not household knowledge, even in Oak Creek.)
4) Creaming out of MPS is difficult to prove, and no one has been able to show the affect of open enrollment on MPS. (In general, what we’ve seen in the last 20 years is flight out of Milwaukee, period.) One of the reasons is that creaming occurs within the system first as the “good kids” feed into Rufus King, Riverside and High School of the Arts, generally. Tech is also an option. We do know that choice saved Messmer, and that’s why it’s held up as the jewel of the program. Choice failures have been as profound as Messmer’s success.
3) Whether the choice school is run out of a run down storefront church or out a place like Messmer, with its Tommy G. Thompson athletic center, the school is not required to take the WKCE, and the test is not administered. In fact, choice schools lobbied the state to keep from taking WKCE tests.
4) Federal students with disability funding does not flow through private schools. The subculture of LDE teachers within public education does not exist with private education.
5) The lot for kids on the North Side of Milwaukee — the kids that the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program was designed to help — has not improved since the inception of the program in the early 1990s. Instead of looking critically at the choice program as part of what is not working, MPS is blamed and bashed.
6) At the heart of the program is the idea that a school can be run more efficiently without unionized teachers and a centralized set of rules. It’s understood that paying teachers less helps private schools meet their bottom line, but it doesn’t make for better education.
7) At no point was choice about education or about educated consumer choices — it was about freeing up education funding from central office and redistributing it into the community. There have been successes, but the program has also given birth to a segregated, separate and unequal system of small, entrepeneurship schools that — at best — are not having much of an impact on the community.
A consumer can easily find out more about a brand of automobile than they can about a school. What has occured, with a few exceptions — most of those being in MPS — is that very low income people are stuck with very bad educational choices, just as they’re stuck with bad choices in the consumer economy.