Madison - A state Assembly committee Wednesday gave the final green light needed to put into effect a set of rules aimed at giving state officials much stronger tools to deal with poorly operated schools in Milwaukee's school voucher program.

The new rules are the product of close collaboration between leaders of the voucher movement and the state Department of Public Instruction, two sides that have clashed often over policies for the program, which allows about 14,000 students to use public money to attend private schools, including religious schools, in Milwaukee.

Even the Wisconsin Education Association Council, the state's largest teachers union and a major opponent of vouchers, backed the new rules.

"I have the rare pleasure of saying we are here in full support of the rules proposed today," Susan Mitchell, president of School Choice Wisconsin, told the committee as it considered the proposal by the DPI. Mitchell said later that she thought the rules would provide an effective way to keep schools that would do weak jobs from ever opening and to identify existing weak schools that need to shape up or be closed.

Tony Evers, deputy state superintendent of public instruction, said: "This is a step that has great sense and logic and goes a long way to help kids."

Legislators, regulators and advocates for the voucher program were prodded toward agreement on the rules by the widely publicized closing in the last two years of four voucher schools where there were major financial and operational problems, and by continuing concern that there are some voucher schools that are questionable.

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reporters visited 106 of the 115 schools in the voucher program last spring and concluded in a series of stories in June that major questions about the quality of the education programs existed at 10 to 15 schools. The series attracted wide attention both in Wisconsin and among education activists nationally.

Temporary rules had an impact

Rules that were issued on a temporary basis allowed the DPI to act to close the four schools and appear to have played a large role in keeping other schools that could have created problems from opening. Fifty-four schools applied to join the voucher program for this fall - in addition to the 115 private schools in the program as of last spring - but the DPI has given clearance to only 17 to go forward.

The new rules generally make the temporary ones permanent and add a few additional steps. They include much firmer rules on financial practices, particularly for start-up schools, and requirements to submit audited reports on how many students are actually attending a school much earlier in a school year than previously.

Schools will have to use independent certified accounting firms to do such reports. And the DPI will have a much stronger hand in closing schools where there are concerns about safety or other operating issues.

The rules also would bar any leader involved in a school that was closed by enforcement of the rules from becoming involved in another school for at least seven years. One of the main figures in a school that closed last year is now aiming to open a new school, but his efforts were launched before the new rules will take effect.

Mitchell told the Assembly Education Reform Committee that she thinks the three key elements of the new rules are their focus on verifying whether students are actually in seats, their provisions for allowing enforcement to focus on problem schools without requiring burdensome work by well-operated schools, and the flexibility they give DPI officials in dealing with problems at schools.

DPI won't regulate programs

The new rules do not give the state any increased authority in overseeing the actual educational programs of schools. The DPI has little say over what schools in the voucher program do in the classrooms.

Evers said the DPI has not changed its position in favor of requiring voucher students to take the state's standardized tests for public school students but that, as a practical matter, that isn't going to get approved any time soon. Mitchell said voucher movement leaders continue to favor a long-term longitudinal study of how participating students are doing, but that step also has been stymied by the politics of the issue in the Capitol.

The new rules also do nothing about what will happen when the voucher program hits the limit on enrollment set by state law. The program may actually reach the limit this fall, but the DPI has agreed to allow all students who enroll by mid-September to continue using vouchers. Mitchell said she expects there to be no way to dodge the politically heated cap issue before the start of the 2006-'07 school year.

The committee took no direct action on the rules Tuesday, which had the same effect as approving them. Barring unexpected developments, the rules will go into effect without further action on Sept. 6.