MPS suffers death by a thousand cuts while private, select schools get millions

More than 30 years ago, the Wisconsin Legislature and Republican Gov. Tommy Thompson passed a new law that allows Milwaukee public school tax dollars to go directly to private voucher schools that are not accountable or transparent to the public. Since the first voucher law in the early 1990s, publicly funded private schools have expanded to include private schools, while funding for voucher schools has expanded exponentially across the state.

Last month, the Wisconsin Policy Forum released a report on the current state of education in Milwaukee, 30 years after the first voucher law. There are two main takeaways from the report: the voucher scam has failed to improve outcomes for Milwaukee kids, and private voucher and charter schools are failing to educate Milwaukee’s student population with special needs.

Additionally, billions of dollars have been robbed from our public schools with no positive results to report from private and voucher schools, while Milwaukee Public School students have been systematically disenfranchised through a “dead by a thousand” approach of discounts”.

Miguel Cardona: Tax dollars that go to schools of choice take away critical funding for public education

U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona, in a Sept. 3 op-ed in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, said, “The cracks of public schools should never be allowed to atrophy while a separate, less accountable and less transparently prosper”.

Independent report shows we have little to show for school choice

The basic argument for publicly funded private voucher schools is that by moving some students out of traditional public schools, all students will do better. However, after more than 30 years, this is not happening. In a section of the WPF brief titled “The Transformed System Has Not Transformed Outcomes,” the report says that despite 30 years of taxpayers funding private voucher and charter schools, “There is little evidence, however, that the average child in Milwaukee gets top quality. education today.”

In 2023-24, Wisconsin taxpayers spent approximately $700 million on a second, separate and unaccountable education system that we now know has not improved outcomes for children. This is an unsustainable disservice to taxpayers and children.

We need parent-friendly policies. Secretary Cardona’s Wisconsin bus tour crashes.

For years, public schools have begged the state to honor its duty to provide an equitable education to students with special needs by increasing the rate at which special education costs are reimbursed to districts. Currently, the state reimburses public schools 32 cents on the dollar. The Republican-majority Wisconsin Legislature chooses to reimburse private voucher school special education costs at nearly three times as much — 90 cents on the dollar.

Despite triple funding, voucher schools are failing special needs students

Despite this huge disparity, charter schools educate far fewer students with special needs than public schools. According to the WPF report, approximately 20 percent of MPS students require special education services. However, charter schools in the same Milwaukee community have student bodies that include less than 1 percent students with special needs. For private schools, this figure is around 11%. Much better than voucher schools, but still far behind public schools in educating all students, regardless of their individual needs.

The data shows otherwise. Arguments that Wisconsin schools are underfunded don’t add up.

This is personal: Wisconsin school choice is not controversial among the students and families it serves

It costs more money to educate students with special needs, but with a 90% reimbursement rate, it is inexcusable that private voucher schools so widely refuse to educate students with special needs. Private voucher schools are known to often bring in students for Third Friday — the day in September when student attendance determines per-pupil state funding — and then advise them to walk out of the schools. When this happens, students return to public schools. Zero dollars is returned to the public schools the students return to, and the voucher school retains all of the per-pupil funding. This practice is a theft of public tax dollars.

Now that we know conclusively that voucher and private schools have failed to improve student outcomes at enormous expense to taxpayers, the Wisconsin Legislature and Governor should work quickly to protect Wisconsin taxpayers and children by ending it once and for all and the privatization scam. for all, so that all children in Milwaukee can be served by high-quality, equitable public schools.

Ingrid Walker-Henry is president of the Milwaukee Teacher Education Association.

This article originally appeared on the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Opinion: Publicly Funded Private Schools Waste WI Taxpayer Dollars