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January 2006
By The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
At last, a key missing piece of Milwaukee's school voucher program - an evaluation - may fall into place. No, the circumstances are not ideal. The main drawback is lack of state sponsorship, due to Gov. Jim Doyle's refusal to cooperate. But a research institute has stepped forward, offering to tap foundations to fund the study - the second-best way to go.
This breakthrough deserves the backing of all parties - officials for the state, the public schools and the voucher schools. The lack of such support could torpedo this long overdue project to ascertain how well the pioneering private school choice program is working in Milwaukee.
At the same time, in delving into an issue rife with controversy, the research team must project an image of evenhandedness. It may have already stumbled by including Jay Greene, a University of Arkansas professor widely regarded as a champion of school choice.
But this flaw ought not to be fatal. The team also includes John Witte, a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor who conducted evaluations in the early years of the program, before its expansion into religious schools. Some backers of choice attacked his research, whose results were inconclusive. Simply, the new study must be as transparent as possible so other scholars can evaluate the evaluation.
Some of the nation's top education researchers would conduct the five-year study under the auspices of the School Choice Demonstration Project at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. They would follow the academic and other progress of individual students inside and outside the school choice program, by which low-income families get state vouchers redeemable for tuition at private schools, and issue periodic findings over the five years.
To date, the Demonstration Project has lined up about 40% of the
$9 million cost. Its goal, wisely, is to bring foundations with various perspectives aboard to enhance the appearance of evenhandedness.
An evaluation ought to be a routine component of public programs, particularly ones that chart a radically new direction, so that policy-makers and the public can learn whether course corrections are in order or whether the programs should be scrapped or expanded.
Blame then-Gov. Tommy Thompson, a Republican, for dropping evaluation from the voucher program, perhaps because Witte's findings weren't as cheery as he had hoped. And blame Doyle, a Democrat, for failing to reassert the evaluation. He has vetoed Republican bills authorizing a long-term study of the program, faulting the proposal ostensibly because participation would have been voluntary on the part of choice schools.
In fact, one virtue of state sponsorship is its power to mandate some level of participation in the study. The Demonstration Project must rely on voluntary cooperation, including from the state Department of Public Instruction, officials of which have warned that federal law may prevent them from divulging information on students in the voucher program.
The Public Policy Forum has done an annual survey of choice schools to give parents as much information as possible to make informed choices. This information is now available in poster form, and an accompanying trend study will be released this week.
But this report doesn't tell parents or the state what they most need to know: Are the schools working? The Georgetown study is the welcome promise that, at last, surmises and anecdotes may give way to hard facts.
This editorial appeared in the January 29, 2026 Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
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