At a recent town hall, both leading Democratic candidates for the governorship of Wisconsin, state Rep. Francesca Hong and former Lieutenant Gov. Mandela Barnes, pledged to abolish the school choice program in their state.
Meanwhile, the progressive legal organization Law Forward filed a suit that could end the Dairy State’s 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.
Wisconsin’s highest court may be primed to agree — 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 Wisconsin’s choice programs and a stain upon the Democratic Party’s record. It would signal that the party would rather cave to pressure from teachers unions and progressives than actually serve student needs.
WISCONSIN STATE SUPERINTENDENT CALLS FOR SCHOOL CHOICE TO BE ‘ELIMINATED’
Milwaukee boasts the nation’s first voucher program after Republican Gov. Tommy Thompson teamed up with local civil rights 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 parents 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. Students who attend participating schools are more likely to attend college, persist through college and abstain from criminal activity into adulthood.
HOUSTON SCHOOL DISTRICT TRYING TO WOO PARENTS WHILE LOSING STUDENTS AMID SCHOOL CHOICE COMPETITION
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. There’s 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 Florida’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.
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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 needn’t become reality. Florida is an instructive case study. Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis won because a savvy social media campaign pressed the issue, emphasizing Democrat competitor Andrew Gillum’s opposition to school choice. In the end, DeSantis won because of so-called “school choice moms,” including a significant share of African-American women who voted for him on the issue of school choice.
However, this fight ends, it has several lessons for national reformers: The fate of voucher, tax credit and education savings account programs remains tenuous, even moderate Democrats are turning against education freedom, and most importantly, every student deserves access to quality education. Destroy these programs, and it may prove a win for Democrats, but it’s a loss for children and their families.
