At a recent town hall, both leading Democratic candidates for the governorship of Wisconsin, state Rep. Francesca Hong and former Lieutenant Gov. , pledged to abolish the school choice program in their state.
Meanwhile, the progressive legal organization Forward filed a suit that could end the Dairy States school choice programs, alleging that these programs run afoul of the state constitution. The 2000 state supreme court ruling that permitted vouchers did so only so long as the state legislature provides “sufficient resources” to traditional public schools. Even though the state currently funds Milwaukee Public Schools to the tune of $25,000 per student, Law Forward alleges that these resources are insufficient.
Wisconsins highest court may be primed to agree â the court flipped to a progressive majority in 2023.
Were either effort to succeed, it would be a travesty for the 60,000 students who currently enroll in one of Wisconsins choice programs and a stain upon the Democratic Partys record. It would signal that the party would rather cave to pressure from teachers unions and progressives than actually serve student needs.
Milwaukee boasts the nations first voucher program after Republican Gov. Tommy Thompson teamed up with local groups to pass a choice policy in 1990. Notably, it was a civil rights framing, not appeals to libertarian or religious concerns, that won support.
In his book “Voucher Wars,” attorney Clint Bolick tells of the rows of African-American who supported the voucher by attending every court meeting. The Wall Street Journal ran three op-eds in support of the initiative and Bolick writes that “for the first time in a major national media outlet, the civil rights banner was unfurled over the school choice movement.” Such a proclamation remains true.
The primary beneficiaries of choice policies are the students who themselves receive vouchers and thereby can access school options that they could not otherwise afford. Â Students who attend participating schools are more likely to attend college, persist through college and abstain from criminal activity into adulthood.
Affluent families already leverage their resources to purchase homes in well-to-do communities with successful schools. Vouchers afford this same ability to everyone else.
Other surprising beneficiaries of school choice, however, are students who remain in traditional public schools. Theres a robust body of literature that studies the so called “competitive effects” of school choice programs, whereby the competition from charter, private and other such options apply pressure to public schools such that they improve the outcomes of their own students. Good intentions are laudable, but nothing incentivizes institutional change quite like threatening the bottom line.
In a recent Education Next report, researcher Patrick Graff compares the effects on academic outcomes of competitive pressure from school choice to the effects of increased spending. He writes that the expenditures of s choice programs “improved public school student achievement” far more than “had the same amount of new funding instead been spent directly through the public school system.” Researchers have found similar effects in Milwaukee.
Wisconsin only leads the charge of a growing effort among Democrats to kill of school choice policies. Illinois ended a similar school choice program in 2023. Arizona Democrats have attempted several referenda to either end or limit choice policies in the Grand Canyon State. And countless policies at the state level have been proposed to heap burdensome regulations on education freedom.
But these grim indications for school choice neednt become reality. Florida is an instructive case study. Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis won
