Private schools taking part in the ground breaking Milwaukee voucher program have become more racially diverse since the program expanded, according to data compiled by two leading advocates of the program.

The report released Friday provided the first detailed presentation of information on the racial makeup of students taking part in the school choice program, in which the state is paying for about 8,000 students in Milwaukee this year to attend private schools, including religious schools.

The analysis released by Howard Fuller, a Marquette University professor and former superintendent of Milwaukee Public Schools, and George Mitchell, a consultant, concluded that the minority enrollment in choice schools had increased as a result of the program and that a smaller proportion of choice schools were racially isolated than was true in Milwaukee Public Schools.

Critics of the program, both locally and nationally, had argued that choice would bring more racial isolation to schools in Milwaukee, allowing more white students to leave the predominantly black public school system. They also argued that the private schools involved tended strongly to be almost entirely of one race or ethnic group in their individual enrollments.

But in their report, Fuller and Mitchell say that, "rather than increasing racial isolation, choice has caused a notable increase in racial balance in Milwaukee's private schools."

After the state Legislature approved expansion of the choice program in 1995, the NAACP argued in an unsuccessful lawsuit that the move would increase segregation in schools. Choice critics such as University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee professor Alex Molnar have used national forums recently to criticize the absence of data on the racial makeup of the program.

The report from Fuller and Mitchell is clearly aimed at responding to critics, with an upcoming report from the state's Legislative Audit Bureau expected to give additional data and a second view.

Representatives of the NAACP and Molnar could not be reached for comment Friday.

State Rep. Annette Polly Williams (D-Milwaukee), a central figure in creating the choice program but someone who has been very leery of how the racial aspects of the program were playing out, said she did not want to react to the report until she'd had a chance to read it. "They have findings they want to prove," she said of Fuller and Mitchell.

Using information from the annual citywide school census, Mitchell and Fuller said that in the 1994-'95 school year, before the choice program expanded sharply, private schools in the city were 73% white and 27% minority. In the 1998-'99 school year, the figures were 64% white and 36% minority.

The two estimated that African-American children accounted for 54% of the growth in the choice program between 1994-'95, when there were 802 students taking part, and 1998-'99, when there were 6,194 involved.

White children made up 28% of the growth. During the same period, the proportion of white children in the public school system fell from 22% to 18%.

Hispanics accounted for 15% of the new choice students, and 3% were from other ethnic groups, Fuller and Mitchell said.

The two compiled figures suggesting that the decline in the percentage of white students in MPS would have been about the same whether or not the choice program was expanded, while the increase in racial diversity in private schools was due almost fully to the influx of choice students

The analysis included a breakdown by race of the enrollment at 26 Catholic schools that are taking part in the choice program. The schools individually ranged from 98% white (St. Paul, on the southeast side), to 100% minority (St. Leo, in the central city).

But 18 out of 26 were not "racially isolated," defined as having non-white enrollment that was either less than 10% or more than 90% of the school, Mitchell and Fuller said.

And overall, the two said, 38% of minority students in the 26 Catholic elementary school attended racially isolated schools in 1998-'99, compared with 58% of minority MPS elementary students who were in schools that were almost all of one race.

The report said that because the choice program is growing and most of the new students are from minority groups, Milwaukee Archdiocese officials expect the number of students in racially non-diverse schools to go down.

The conclusions of the report are in line with findings by a researcher who examined the voucher program in Cleveland, the only other large-scale publicly funded program in the United States, and found that schools accepting voucher students were doing better overall on racial integration than Cleveland public schools as a whole.