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SCHOOL CHOICE: Milwaukee, Kentucky?

Bluegrass Institute for Public Policy Solutions

The Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS) have everything Kentucky educators claim to want.

During the past 13 years, enrollment, graduation rates and test scores are up for nearly every age group. During the past six years, MPS students also have improved their national ranking in 11 of 15 areas, including math, science and reading.

These achievements have been made possible because of an education policy that allows competition between schools.

Unlike Kentuckians, Milwaukee’s parents are now free to choose which school their children will attend. Parents and students see themselves as customers of their local school instead of being the captives of a failing system. If a school fails to make the grade, parents can take their “business” elsewhere.

Unlike Kentucky, Milwaukee’s policy also instructs education officials to send designated state funding with those students to the schools of their parents’ choice. And despite the howls of critics across Kentucky and the nation, school choice has not hurt MPS’ fiscal condition.

If anything, it has helped. Since 1990, the State of Wisconsin, City of Milwaukee and MPS have spent more than $200 million on new, expanded and reconditioned facilities. The bulk of these investments has been made in central city neighborhoods that were once neglected in favor of school construction in predominantly white areas and suburbs.

Despite dire predictions of naysayers, increases in per-pupil spending rose 24 percent during the 1990s, when most of the school-choice programs were implemented in the city.

Across Kentucky, an educational establishment hostile to school-choice alternatives opposes parents who stand for liberty. Opponents of educational freedom, however, are headed down a path of failure.

Many of the detractors know how successfully school-choice programs are progressing in other states and are working hard to stop such policy from getting a fair shake in Kentucky.

Sources:

“How school choice helps the Milwaukee public schools” by John Gardner, American Education Reform Council

“Graduation rates for choice and public school students in Milwaukee” by Jay P. Greene, School Choice Wisconsin

“Milwaukee's Public Schools in an Era of Choice,” a report by School Choice Wisconsin

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