Members of the Wisconsin Legislature's Black and Latino Caucus wrote Gov. Scott Walker and legislative leaders recently expressing concern that "outside forces and ideology will dominate this discussion" over the proposed expansion of the Milwaukee voucher program. In particular, the members have called for maintaining the accountability standards governing the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program put in place two years ago as well as maintaining the income limits. Gov. Walker has called for eliminating the income threshold, which currently limits eligibility to those students who come from households at 175 percent of poverty. Not long before the Black and Latino Caucus sent the letter, longtime choice champion Howard Fuller told the Legislature's Joint Finance Committee that he would oppose any program that "essentially provides a subsidy for rich people."
Just as Fuller has done, the legislators recommended aligning the income threshold of the voucher program with the BadgerCare initiative in Wisconsin, which provides health care to state residents who earn less than 300 percent of poverty. "It is common sense that the level of poverty that qualifies a family for healthcare should be the same as that which qualifies a family for the choice program, always intended to be for low-income persons," the legislators wrote.
Much of our podcast this week with Howard Fuller explored statements Fuller made recently admonishing Wisconsin's governor and legislature for plans to eliminate the income requirements for entry into the Milwaukee voucher program, but another point in our talk highlighted his thoughts on the acacemic achievement of students in the program, and what it means.
Results from a comparative assessment between students in the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program and those in the school district showed that students receiving vouchers performed no better than their peers in traditional public schools. That has led to the responses one might expect among voucher critics, such as Diane Ravitch, but Fuller, the founder of the Black Alliance for Educational Options, explains why it's unfair to dismiss the entire enterprise:
There are two elements to choice. One is choice. There is a power to having choice. So when people say students don’t do any better, the issue is do you now therefore want to deny parents the option of being able to go to schools that do do better. Because not all of the schools did not do better. Some of them did much better. And the real purpose of choice is to give people who have not previously had options the ability to choose.
Now the second thing we have to work on is to improve the schools that they will have the choice to attend. Because a voucher is not a school. It’s a mechanism. It’s a funding mechanism to get people to a school. And because we have not yet turned a corner where all of the schools that peple are attending are better. That is not a reason to deny parents the power to choose. Because, if that’s the case, then you should shut down the whole traditional public school system, because vast numbers of those schools are not serving people well at all.
… The second point I would make is, it’s incumbent upon all of us, then, to support freedom to choose, to fight for quality. Because freedom is illusionary if you don’t have the ability to choose from something other than mediocrity.
... The third point is, we’re doing almost as well with half the money. One of the things people got to understand is, if I'm trying to make a school work, and I’ve only got $6,500 per kid, and you got a school making $13,000, with all due respect, money does matter. Because there’s never been equity in funding, it’s very difficult to make an argument that someone getting half the money should do as well as someone getting double what you’re getting.
Howard Fuller will never support a universally accessible voucher, and he will oppose any effort to lift all income restrictions to the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program. But that doesn't mean he won't consider reviewing the elibility requirements that have been in place since Wisconsin established the voucher program more than 20 years ago.
In an interview today with redefinED, Fuller said there is a way to expand the program to serve more Milwaukee students while remaining faithful to the cause for social justice that inspired the program in the first place. Currently, families new to the program can earn a household income no greater than 175 percent of the federal poverty level, which for a family of four totals $38,937. Yet, as Fuller notes, the median household income in Milwaukee is $34,898. Gov. Scott Walker can capture more low-income and working-class families by following other means-tested models proven in other public services without establishing a universal voucher, which Fuller says would ultimately subisdize the wealthy.
As an example, he pointed to Wisconsin's BadgerCare program, which provides health care to state residents who earn less than 300 percent of poverty, which is about $67,000 for a family of four. "That would capture over 80 percent of the households in the city," Fuller said. "So if your real objective is to expand the level of support, you could do that, and still retain a focus on low-income and moderate-income families."
Earlier this week, Fuller told legislators that if they passed Walker's plan to eliminate the income threshold, "I will become an opponent of a program that I have fought for over 20 years." On Monday, redefinED will feature a podcast of the interview with Fuller, who also shares why choice without regulation or accountability is not enough and why he thinks the school choice movement nationally could be coming to a critical juncture for him.
Yesterday, we highlighted Howard Fuller's alarm over Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker's proposal to eliminate the income threshold for entry into the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program. The Black Alliance for Educational Options now has posted Fuller's comments to the Wisconsin legislative Joint Finance Committee, to which Fuller closed by saying:
I am a person who has taken blows for years from people who have said this program for some has never been about poor people. They warned that once the program got established the real agenda would surface, which is to get money for rich people. I have never believed and do not believe now that many people who have fought for the program over the years had this as their purpose. But, this is exactly what this provision does. I want everyone to understand that if this provision becomes law, I will become an opponent of a program that I have fought for over 20 years. I will never support a program that essentially provides a subsidy for rich people.
Those who favor private learning options for poor children can count few champions for their cause more passionate than Howard Fuller, who is almost singularly responsible for the success of Milwaukee's voucher program, the nation's oldest. That's why we should take seriously Fuller's heartburn over Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker's proposal to remove the income restrictions to the voucher and open the Parental Choice Program to wealthier families.
If Walker is successful, Fuller told the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel yesterday, "that's when I get off the train," and further called Walker's proposal "egregious" and "outrageous" during testimony of Wisconsin's legislative Joint Finance Committee.
The point Fuller is making is one that too often gets lost in the debate over education reform generally and vouchers specifically: Programs such as Milwaukee's began with the sense that families of wealthier means already had options beyond the neighborhood public school, and that poor families might benefit from public policies that empowered them to find the best fit for their children. And that sense still pervades current means-tested efforts such as Florida's tax credit scholarship and the pending measures in Pennsylvania and New Jersey.
Any movement in education reform is larger than one person, but let's not dismiss the jaw-dropping implications of Fuller's alarm. State legislatures may feel momentum toward greater school choice and choice advocates may be emboldened by the U.S. Supreme Court's move to legally insulate an Arizona tax credit scholarship, but Fuller would have us remember who needs our greatest help.
UPDATE: A team of university researchers is releasing data showing more comprehensive results on the performance of students in the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program than the state of Wisconsin has shown, according to a story in today's Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel. The team, which includes professors John F. Witte of the University of Wisconsin and Patrick J. Wolf of the University of Arkansas, have tracked the performance of a sampling of children in the choice program over three years and found that the students performed about the same as their peers in Milwaukee Public Schools, not worse. The day before, the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction released data showing that half the students at either setting read at grade level, but that district students far outperformed choice students in math. The university team also found that a sampling of ninth-graders in the voucher program had slightly higher rates of graduation and enrollment at a four-year college than a matched sampling of students in the school district.
The results of Milwaukee's first comparative assessment of students in the Parental Choice Program and those of their peers in the school district have uncorked the kind of responses one might expect from an education policy that has divided the community for more than 20 years. But that does more to highlight the political strains of the voucher program than it does to explain the performance of its 21,000 students.
This is not to dismiss the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction's data, which showed that the low-income students in the choice program performed similiarly to their traditional public school peers on free or reduced-price lunch in some ways, and worse in others. About half the students in either setting are reading at grade level. But only 34.4 percent of choice students scored proficiently in math, compared to 43.9 percent among low-income pupils at Milwaukee Public Schools.
That's certainly not good news for the choice program, but it's hardly the occasion to tell the low-income parents who've chosen to participate that they've been "bamboozled," as one Democratic representative told the Wisconsin State Journal. As University of Wisconsin political science professor John Witte noted, "in order to study achievement growth and gain, you have to study individual students over time." Witte has been among the most clear-eyed and careful scholars to study the academic impact of school vouchers generally and the Milwaukee program specifically, and his careful response to yesterday's news should better inform the state's own superintendent of instruction. Shamefully, state Superintendent Tony Evers distributed a news release statewide showcasing that Milwaukee public schools do it better.
Such a move from Wisconsin's top educator does nothing to advance the debate over how best to educate our most disadvantaged children in the 21st century. We have a growing array of educational alternatives from which to choose in our public education systems and we should be careful to avoid singling out one option as better than another. Milwaukee's program was created in 1990 at the urging of a Democratic representative who wanted to empower her low-income and mostly minority constituency with the same ability to choose a private or even faith-based alternative that wealthier families had long enjoyed.
This response may seem to avoid the reality of the data. I don't argue that test scores are insignificant, but just as in traditional schools, they are best judged over time. Florida's tax credit scholarship for low-income students suffered the same criticism two years ago. Northwestern University professor David Figlio examined the performance on the Stanford Achievement Test of students in the scholarship program, as commissioned by the state, and found they made the same gains as students of all income levels nationally. The same achievement was not good enough for critics, but Figlio later cautioned against a rush to judgment. "I feel we need to have stronger causal evidence on the relative effectiveness of the program," he told the St. Petersburg Times.
All schools need to be held accountable for learning, and Milwaukee's record of reaching low-income students through either traditional programs or choice leaves considerable room for improvement. But after 20 years, Milwaukee's public school system should have learned to co-exist with schools like St. Thomas Aquinas Academy or Yeshiva Elementary, which can rightfully be called "public" by any definition. Instead of thumbing his nose, Superintendent Evers should work to find common ground to ensure the poorest and lowest-achieving among us enjoy every opportunity that meets their needs.
