School vouchers, which have made Milwaukee famous, would virtually vanish under a proposal in the Legislature, leaving 10,000 children stranded, turning down the heat that has generated reforms within the public schools and reducing school options for poor parents. Lawmakers must not allow this bill to pass.

This is a cloak-and-dagger measure: The bill doesn't kill the voucher program outright. Rather, it reduces state funds for vouchers to a level so low that they would be of little use. Within two years, the worth of a voucher would fall spectacularly - as much as 81%, to $1,000, for a grade school, and as much as 72%, to $1,500, for a high school.

Surely, the sponsor - Sen. Russ Decker, a ,Schofield Democrat -- knows low-income parents can't make up the difference. Killing the program is his obvious intent; he just doesn't want to be seen wielding the knife.

While supportive of the idea of choice for secular schools, we opposed its expansion to religious schools on the basis that it would, we thought, breach the wall that properly separates church and state.

The Wisconsin Supreme Court came to the opposite conclusion, however, so this year 10,000 poor or near-poor children are attending private schools with the help of vouchers. Taking the program away now would put too much turmoil into their lives.

What's more, in our judgment it's no coincidence that the Milwaukee Public Schools stepped up reforms as the voucher program expanded. The competition gave power to once-ignored reformers within MPS.

For instance, schools are to a large extent picking their own teachers - an unthinkable step forward just a few years back, when schools requested teachers, and the central office sent them on the basis of seniority. The teachers union had long refused to entertain any suggestion to change that system - that is, until MPS got competition.

The vouchers also promote equity. Parents with money exercise choice by moving or by sending their kids to private schools. Needy parents deserve a measure of choice, too.

The parents of some of the 10,000 students probably would manage to scrape money together to keep their children in the schools they're attending. But many other children would make their way back to the costlier Milwaukee Public Schools. So the saving Decker is predicting is not likely to materialize anyway.

In taking up his bill today, the Joint Finance Committee, including its Milwaukee members, should stand with those children. There is room to reform how the state finances vouchers. But Decker's measure is no reform; it's a premeditated death blow.