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March 2006
By Susan Mitchell
Why limit success?
That is the question advocates of parental choice have asked as they seek an increase in the enrollment cap on the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program (MPCP).
Milwaukee offers parents more options than any urban area in the country. Nearly 15,000 low-income students attend private schools that participate in the MPCP. The program has grown from 337 students in 1990 to about 15,000 students this year.
In Milwaukee, not just Milwaukee Public Schools but also the city, University of Wisconsin and technical college can grant charters. The number of charter schools has grown from one in 1997 to 53 this year. Finally, MPS contracts with 14 schools that offer seats to “at-risk” students.
All of these programs offer educational freedom to students and incentives for public schools to improve. The current MPS superintendent and two of his predecessors have said publicly that parent choice gives them the leverage they need to make improvements.
How well does it work? Consider the following.
The graduation rates of students in the MPCP are 64 percent compared to 36 percent for MPS students, according to a study by Jay Greene. Greene’s methodology is recognized nationally as reliable. His analysis of graduation rate data is used by Education Week’s annual report card.
Other research has shown that parents who choose are highly satisfied and become more involved in their
child’s education. Studies also have shown that – contrary to opponents’ assertion that choice programs skim the “best” students – MPCP students are academically behind – sometimes several years below grade level. This is no particular surprise. Why would parents move students who are doing well?
Critics contend that parent choice hurts public schools. But MPS performance has improved during the years that parent choice has expanded. Harvard economist Caroline Hoxby studied public schools affected by the MPCP and found what she termed “dramatic improvements in productivity.”
Separately, School Choice Wisconsin has reviewed MPS data and found increases in test scores in thirteen of
fifteen categories between 1997 and 2005 and a reduction in the annual dropout rate from 16.2 percent to 10.2 percent between 1991 and 2003.
Those gains have been accompanied by system-wide changes within MPS. Teachers – once assigned almost solely on the basis of seniority – now are hired at the school level. School budgets are based on enroll-
ment. Dollars follow students to schools that now control 95 percent of MPS operating funds. The result is increased accountability and incentives to attract students.
Those gains notwithstanding, the state teacher’s union continues to argue that school choice unfairly drains funds from public schools. Notably, the union has never complained that the 29.4 percent of MPS teachers who choose private schools create a similar problem.
The positive impact of parent choice is not limited to academic outcomes. Parent choice has spurred significant private investment totaling about $118 million in some of Milwaukee’s most economically distressed neighborhoods. This investment has allowed educators to expand or start up new schools but only if they are schools that parents want.
Opponents have used a handful of headlines about bad schools to justify attacks on the program. How can we
support a program where administrators use state dollars to buy Mercedes, they ask.
We don’t. That school was removed from the program in 2004 and the administrator sent to prison. That’s because the school choice coalition has worked with legislators and the Department of Public Instruction to pass a law to strengthen oversight of schools in the program. DPI has used that law – Act 155 – to remove seven schools from the program.
Families, public and private schools, and the community benefit when parents have the freedom to choose the schools best for their children. We have no reason to fear such policy and every reason to embrace it.
Most families in this country already have school choice. They have the resources to move and leave a poorly performing district behind or to place their children in private schools. Let’s give more families that opportunity.
The above Op-Ed appeared in the February 26, 2026 Kenosha News.
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