Recently I wrote a post maintaining that choice had failed in Milwaukee, and that the city would be better off if it had a single public school system, doors open to all, receiving public support and public funding and civic energy. Uniting behind public education makes more sense than supporting three separate systems, none of which do well for studnts.

The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel published my post as an opinion piece. So far, my views have been critiqued by two other opinion pieces. One is by the research director of a free-market organization that advocates for vouchers, who says (ironically) that my call for unity around public schooling is “divisive.” This article gave me a hearty laugh.

The other article, by Patrick Wolf and John Witte also took exception to my blog post. They responded in an article in the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel and maintained that choice was a great success in Milwaukee and far better than public schooling.

This is my response to Wolf and Witte.

Milwaukee’s choice program is a failure. There are now three

separate systems—the public schools, with about 80,000 students; the

voucher schools, with about 23,000 students, and the charter schools,

with about 20,000 students.

There is very little difference among the three sectors in

terms of student achievement.

Patrick Wolf and John Witte do not agree. They think the

voucher and charter programs have been successful. They say that the

voucher schools have higher graduation rates, but critics who reviewed

their study say that about 75 percent of the original 9th graders were

not still enrolled in a voucher high school by the end of senior year.

With such high attrition from voucher schools, the graduation rates

are meaningless.

When the voucher and charter movements were first launched in the

early 1990s, advocates insisted that competition would cause the

public schools to improve. Governor Scott Walker still says so.

Advocates also said they wanted public funds to flow

to private and religious schools, because it would help minority

children.

But this has not happened. On the latest federal tests of math and reading, Milwaukee was one of the nation’s lowest performing urban school districts. Its performance was similar to the very lowest performing districts: Cleveland, D.C., and Detroit.

After twenty years of choice, the test scores of black

students in Milwaukee are similar to those of black students in

District of Columbia, Cleveland, Mississippi and Alabama.

Wolf and Witte claim that the choice schools do not skim the easiest

to educate students. When choice schools skim, it leaves the public schools worse off, with the most expensive students to educate

Wolf earlier admitted that 19% of the students in the Milwaukee

public schools have disabilities, compared to somewhere between 7 and

14.5 percent in the voucher schools. As Wolf told Education Week,

voucher schools typically accept students with mild to moderate

disabilities, which leaves the most severely disabled to the public

schools.

It is inefficient to run three separate school systems. Not only does

it triplicate costs, but it divides civic energy. All the people of

Milwaukee should work together to build a school system that meets the

needs of all the children.

Twenty years of experience with choice in Milwaukee demonstrates that

it is not effective or efficient to run three school systems. It does not meet the needs of children.

We should have learned that in 1954, when the U.S. Supreme Court declared

a dual school system to be unconstitutional.