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School choice is changing education in the US city of Milwaukee

Free Market Foundation

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As the U.S. Supreme Court considers the challenge to school choice in Cleveland, Milwaukee is now offering more tax-supported educational choices than any other U.S. city. Utilising charters and vouchers, the choices are not confined to parochial schools.

  • Vouchers help nearly 11,000 students attend 106 schools in Milwaukee, while more than 2,200 students attend seven different charter schools sponsored by the city or the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.
  • Milwaukee is the only city where charter schools may be launched by public authorities other than local school districts.
  • Of the 37 schools created in inner-city Milwaukee since the launch of its choice programme, nearly two-thirds are private and non-sectarian – educating more than one-third of the nearly 11,000 choice students.

    Moreover, competition generated by the choice movement has brought many fundamental and salutary changes to the way public schools operate.

  • Public school administrators negotiated with their teachers’ union a new programme to “counsel out” problem teachers.
  • They gave individual schools more responsibility for hiring, school budgeting and curriculum – and expanded specialty programmes like Montessori schools that historically turned students away because of lack of space.
  • Public school administrators approved a neighbourhood school initiative to increase the number of schools that students can walk to; they converted halftime kindergarten to fulltime; they embarked on a major expansion of before-and after-school child care.

    Harvard University economist Caroline M. Hoxby has concluded that public schools in Milwaukee “have a strong, positive response to competition from vouchers.”

    Source: John O. Norquist (Mayor of Milwaukee), Vouchers Aren’t Just for Religious Schools, Wall Street Journal, February 20, 2002.

    For text (WSJ subscribers) http://online.wsj.com/article/0,4286,SB1014171864338868280,00.htm
    For more on Vouchers http://www.ncpa.org/iss/edu/

    FMF Policy Bulletin\26 February 2002

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