MOUNT PLEASANT, WI — Gov. Scott Walker has signed a new voucher school bill into law Wednesday that requires private schools participating in a school choice program to conduct background checks of its employees.
The bill passed the Senate with a vote of 28-5 and was concurred by the Assembly with a vote of 67-30.
The new law also eliminates certain academic threshholds that choice schools must currently meet, including at least one of the following:
1) At least 70 percent of the pupils in the program advance one grade level each year.
2)) The private school’s average attendance rate for the pupils in the program is at least 90 percent
3) At least 80 percent of the pupils in the program demonstrate significant academic
progress
4) At least 70 percent of the families of pupils in the program meet parent involvement criteria established by the private school.
Texas is one of just seven states with Republican-controlled Legislatures and governorships that have stonewalled private school choice — and many others are small and rural, such as North Dakota and Wyoming.
Leaders of the school choice movement are stumped by the rebuff since Texas usually leads the nation in driving the conservative agenda. They have vowed to spend money and recruit primary challengers to defeat anti-school choice legislators.
“Texas is hailed to be this conservative, deep red state but you look across the country where we have school choice programs and it’s places like Indiana and Ohio and Wisconsin,” said Randan Steinhauser, co-founder of the pro-school choice group Texans for Education Opportunity. “It’s really frustrating.”
Steinhauser worked in Washington for Betsy DeVos, the outspoken school choice advocate who is now Trump’s education secretary. She thought she could advance the cause after returning to her native state four years ago: “I was kind of naive thinking, ‘Oh yeah, we’ll get it done, no problem,'” Steinhauser said. “I was shocked.”
The issue lays bare the ideological split between a high-profile tier of conservative activists and more traditional Republicans seeking to safeguard heartland values.
Republicans from rural districts are worried about the dwindling of many small towns, and fearful of undermining public schools that are top employers and the social and cultural lifeblood of community life. On school choice votes, they join forces with Democrats supporting public teachers unions.
Another strong bastion against school vouchers in Texas is the large homeschooling community. Many of them are opposed to vouchers for fear of government imposing onerous requirements on homeschooling.
Newly-elected West Bend School Board member, who ran as a conservative, is anti-choice.
“I am concerned that it is going to reduce the amount of programs and quality of the public schools,” said Tiffany Larson, West Bend School Board member. “I want public tax dollars used for public schools,” she said.
This is noteworthy because I don’t believe it is something she revealed when running for office. School Choice was addressed at more than one candidate forum. She did not indicate her opposition at the one I attended and I can’t find any indication that she did in the reports of the others. And when I interviewed her, I specifically asked her about School Choice. She said that School Choice worked for Milwaukee and didn’t express any opposition to it for West Bend.
Yet, here she is with a pretty standard liberal stance against School Choice.
On another note, the news story itself is quite skewed. It’s the story of a private grade school in Jackson joining the Wisconsin School Choice Program. In the article, the reporter manages to find three people to quote who oppose school choice (Larson, Tanya Lohr, and Paul Nelson), but not a single person who supports School Choice. That’s interesting in a community that has shown significant support for School Choice for years.
The 2015-17 state budget allowed school districts to increase revenues — state aid and property taxes — for students attending private voucher schools, typically about $10,000 per pupil. The districts also lose state aid based on the amount claimed for a voucher, which is capped at about $7,300 for K-8 and $8,000 for high school.
[…]
The scaled-back version of the bill that passed Thursday would allow school districts to retain as much funding in state aid and property tax levy authority per pupil as the amount of each student’s private school voucher.
Under current law, a school district can levy a tax at their spending level for a kid that they don’t have to educate. Under the new bill, a school district can still levy slightly less tax for a kid they don’t have to educate. Either way they are collecting taxes (revenue) without needing to spend anything (cost). It seems that the only people for whom either arrangement is unfair are the taxpayers.
Assembly Speaker Robin Vos is proposing to reduce the amount of money public school districts can raise to offset the loss of state aid for private school vouchers.
The proposal could result in a $22 million loss for public schools under an early estimate, according to the Wisconsin Association of School Boards.
[…]
When students enroll in another school district through open enrollment, most of the state’s funding for that student goes with the student to their new school district. That student’s home district is still able to count that student in their revenue limit calculation, however, allowing the home district to keep some state aid.
Beyer said the new proposal limits school districts’ “ability to raise property taxes for a student they are not actually educating, who would be in the choice program.”
Wisconsin Association of School Boards lobbyist Dan Rossmiller said public school districts’ revenue would be reduced by about $4,000 per student each year — resulting in multi-million dollar revenue losses for school districts with higher numbers of voucher students living in the district.
An analysis showed school districts’ revenue limit authority would be reduced by $22 million, affecting 142 school districts, according to a WASB memo.
In other words, as it stands now, school districts are collecting about $4,000 per voucher students who they don’t educate. In other words, that’s $4,000 per kid that the district gets and extends zero cost to educate those kids. It’s a pure “profit” stream (yes, it’s not really profit in a public school district, but it’s revenue collected without any cost) that these districts use to subsidize other spending.
In an ideal world, we would have a pure voucher system where every kid gets a voucher to spend at the qualified school of their choice. After all, the money is supposed to be for educating kids, so shouldn’t it go to whoever is providing that education? This proposal is nowhere near that, but it’s getting closer to that ideal.
The U.S. Department of Justice has closed a long-running investigation into whether the Milwaukee private school voucher program discriminates against students with disabilities, with no apparent findings of major wrongdoing.
In a quiet conclusion to a probe that’s drawn national attention, the Justice Department sent a letter to the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction on Dec. 23, saying that no further action is warranted beyond the materials it reviewed, meetings it conducted and changes it requested the DPI make to its administration of the Milwaukee voucher program two years ago — directives the DPI largely could not act upon under state law.
My column for the West Bend Daily News is online. Here it is:
The school enrollment numbers are in for September and the statewide school choice program is continuing to see strong demand all over the state wherever it is available to parents and kids. It is a remarkable story of success for a program that is so short-lived.
The Wisconsin Parental Choice Program was started for the 2013-14 school year as a small pilot program. The WPCP is one of the three school choice programs in Wisconsin. The other two school choice programs are for Milwaukee and Racine, but the WPCP applies to all citizens outside of those two cities.
Only 511 kids participated in the WPCP in the first year. Enrollment almost doubled in the 2014-15 school year, to 1,008 kids. And this year, thanks to a gradual lifting of restrictions by the Legislature, enrollment in the WPCP has more than doubled again to 2,513 kids. Similarly, the number of schools participating has increased to a total of 82 schools statewide, including the first high school in Washington County, Kettle Moraine Lutheran High School. Granted, these numbers are a tiny fraction of the 994,536 students in K-12 in Wisconsin, but the trajectory of growth is positive.
Predictably, anti-choice advocates and defenders of the status quo are decrying the fact that some of the funding for the WPCP is coming at the expense of the public schools. Their criticisms are rooted, unfortunately, in the interests of the public school infrastructure and not in that of the children those schools are meant to serve.
The Legislature instituted a way of funding the WPCP with the budget earlier this year. It is a simple funding formula that is designed to be flexible with growth and is rooted in the core principle of money meant to educate a child should follow the child. For every child who gets a voucher through the WPCP, the voucher is funded with state aid that would have otherwise gone to the public school for the purpose of educating the child. For example, if a child in West Bend attends a private school with a WPCP voucher, the amount of state aid the West Bend School District would have received for the child is redirected to the voucher instead of the school district.
Some claim that such a redirection of funds from the school districts constitutes a “cost.” They claim the public school districts are paying for the voucher program, and even using this argument as a justification to raise local property taxes to “offset” the “cost.”
Their arguments are a sham. While the school district does not receive the state aid for the child receiving a voucher, the school district is also not responsible to educate the child. The school district incurs no cost to educate the child, so why should they receive any state aid for that purpose? One can argue whether or not the state taxpayers should pay for lower income kids to attend private schools, but there is no valid argument for state taxpayers to pay public school districts to educate students who do not attend their schools.
It is also worth noting that the state’s open enrollment system, in which students in one district can attend a different district, is funded through a similar mechanism. Open enrollment has been the law in Wisconsin for decades, and yet public school advocates have not complained about it. They only get exercised about the shifting of state aid when that money goes to a private school instead of another public school.
There is a cost to expanding the WPCP, but it is a cost to state taxpayers — not local school districts. To date, roughly 76 percent of kids participating in the WPCP were already attending a private school. Before the WPCP, these families were footing the entire bill, not state taxpayers. With a WPCP voucher, the state taxpayers are now paying for an education that was previously being paid for by only the parents. Even though this is a small additional cost to taxpayers (currently less than 0.01 percent of total spending on K-12 education), the increasing competition in education delivery and varied education opportunities will more than offset the cost while providing better outcomes for Wisconsin’s children.
From health care to groceries to internet providers to banks, having choices has always benefited individuals and society as a whole. Having choices in our education providers will have the same positive impact. We are in the beginning stages of seeing something great for Wisconsin and our children with the budding WPCP.
Participation in a separate Racine voucher program rose about 23% to 2,127 students.
The 142 districts affected by the statewide program stand to lose $11.9 million in state aid this year, according to the department. They will be able to levy an additional $15.8 million in local property taxes, likely pushing up tax bills in some communities.
Voucher advocates welcomed the numbers, saying they reflect a growing parental interest in having more education options for their children. Opponents criticized the program, saying it is strangling public schools.
I will remind y’all again that the public schools are “losing” the state aid for the kids, but they are also losing any responsibility or expense to educate that kid. Meanwhile, they continue to collect the local tax levy for that kid. It is a net gain for public schools.
Consider this fact:
■Three out of four students who entered the statewide program this year had attended a private school the previous year. In Racine, just 12% of the new students had been in private schools, and 66% had transferred from public schools.
So 75% of the kids in the voucher program were not in the public schools last year and are not in the public schools this year. Why would the public schools need to raise local property taxes to educate them? They don’t.
I say it again… there is no rational justification for public schools to raise local property taxes because of the voucher program. The voucher program is driving up state spending, but that’s no reason for local taxes to increase. The public schools is using confusion over the voucher program expansion to do what too many of them want to do anyway… increase taxes and spending.
MADISON — Public school districts and taxpayers across the state could feel the impact of vouchers this year, as more than $16 million is transferred from public schools to pay for new entrants into the Wisconsin Parental Choice Program.
State law now requires public school districts to pay for vouchers. The money will be deducted from state aid.
A total of 142 public school districts have students who use taxpayer-funded subsidies to attend private schools. The state deducted $16.1 million in aid to cover the cost of new voucher students, according to the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction.
First, let us remember that while the school district will not get the state aid associated with the voucher student, neither does the school district have to educate the student. They will incur exactly zero cost to educate the cost and will consequently not receive any state aid for that kid’s education. Meanwhile, the school that is educating the student will receive the state money allocated to provide that education. Seems like a reasonable deal to me.
Second, remember how incredibly tiny the state voucher program is. Last year the state spent $5.3 billion on state aid for school districts. $16.1 million is 0.3% of all state aid. I think the state’s public education infrastructure will survive.
I am writing on a matter of great concern to me. On April 9, 2013, the Department of Justice (DOJ) wrote to direct the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction (DPI) to develop new procedures to ensure the Milwaukee Parent Choice Program (MPCP) is in compliance with Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). In its letter, the DOJ said “[b]ecause the school choice program is a public program funded and administered by the State, the State’s administration of the program is subject to the requirements of Title II.”
I agree that the State must abide by Title II regulations, but Congress clearly did not intend for private schools to be bound by Title II obligations. Congress devised a careful structure in the ADA, outlining five different areas in which persons with disabilities have legal rights and assigning unique requirements to each area. Title II of the ADA prohibits public entities from discriminating against individuals with disabilities. Title III of the ADA prohibits places of public accommodations, such as private schools, from discriminating against individuals with disabilities. In applying this, the DOJ’s own technical compliance manual states that “[p]ublic entities are not subject to title III of the ADA, which covers only private entities” and “[c]onversely, private entities are not subject to title II.” The key difference at issue is the standard set for compliance under Title II and Title III. The MPCP should have no effect on the careful balance Congress crafted.
While the program is publically funded, the individual schools participating in MPCP are no more publically funded than a gas station accepting money from a SNAP recipient. Indeed, in 1990, in its analysis of the Milwaukee choice program, the Department of Education determined that federal disability laws do not apply to “placements in private schools resulting from parents’ decisions to participate in the Choice Program.”
The effect of the argument in your April 9th letter would be to regulate private schools under Title II of the ADA. I have spent my career committed to helping those with disabilities, but Congress did not create differing compliance standards by happenstance. The intent of the law is plainly clear, and this fact has been repeated by the Department of Education and the courts on several occasions. I ask that DOJ remain mindful of this fact during its federal investigation of MPCP. I am worried about the incorrect application of Title II ADA standards and the effect this will have on the viability of private school voucher programs.
My column for the Daily News is online. Check it out.
The Wisconsin Legislature will soon begin in earnest to craft the next biennial budget that will guide state government through the next two years. It has been a month since Gov. Scott Walker issued his budget proposal, and the Legislature will spend the next three months taking his proposals, vetting them through the fire of the legislative process, injecting many of their own proposals, and at the end they will send a budget to Walker’s desk.
One of the major proposals in Walker’s budget that is likely to be subject to a great deal of debate and revision is a dramatic expansion in the Wisconsin Parental Choice Program.
The WPCP was launched in 2013 as a limited expansion of school choice throughout Wisconsin, excluding Milwaukee and Racine which have school choice programs. The WPCP is limited to providing vouchers for 1,000 kids (1,000 for next school year) from lowincome families to attend the private school of their choice. In the current school year, 25 schools participated and the 1,000 vouchers were issued using a somewhat convoluted lottery system.
Walker’s proposal is to remove the 1,000-voucher limit on the WCPC and allow for an unlimited number of vouchers. At the same time, Walker is proposing a way to fund the vouchers by reallocating state funds that would have been sent to the child’s corresponding public school. Finally, Walker’s proposal seeks to limit the availability of vouchers to only kids who were not already attending a private school.
Let us start with the good part of Walker’s proposal. The cap on school choice should be lifted. Period.
The whole reason for school choice is to provide the opportunity for families to send their kids to the school of their choice. Families who have the means already have this choice. The WPCP and other school choice programs seek to allow families of any financial status to choose the best school for their kids. If we ascribe to this ethos, then an arbitrary cap on the number of families who can participate is nonsensical.
The remainder of Walker’s ideas regarding funding and placing restrictions on the WPCP requires some work from the Legislature. The idea to limit vouchers to only those kids who have not already attended a private school is, like the cap, nonsensical.
The purpose of this restriction is to keep a budgetary restraint on the expansion of school choice. The reality is that there are many families who are of sufficiently low income to qualify for school vouchers, but sacrifice to send their kids to a private school. This restriction would forbid those families from receiving a voucher to prevent the taxpayers from picking up a bill that they are not currently paying. While the attempt at fiscal control is laudable, this is not the place to do it. Again, if we ascribe to the principle that school choice exists to provide all families — regardless of income — the opportunity to choose the right school for their kids, then we cheapen that principle when we seek to carve out exemptions and exclusions.
While the WPCP began as an extremely limited program with only 1,000 vouchers available for more than 750,000 school kids in the entire state, it is clear that it is going to be substantially expanded in the next budget.
This likely expansion is opening up opportunities all over the state, including here in Washington County. Kettle Moraine Lutheran High School has become the first private high school in the county to enter the WPCP. As the father of a past, present and future student of KML, I have paid close attention to the risks and rewards of the school entering the program. It is a great school and the prospect of more kids able to attend it is nothing but upside for the kids and their parents.
Much like with the debate over right-to-work, the Legislature should focus on keeping the expansion of WPCP simple. They should eschew attempts to complicate it with exclusions, complicated funding formulas, limits, caps, and other complexities that dilute the program.
School choice is a simple idea based on a simple principle. All kids should have access to the best education for them irrespective of their families’ financial means. A clean expansion of the WPCP advances that principle.
Governor Walker gave his budget address tonight. The biggest thing that wasn’t already floated is a major change in School Choice. WisPolitics has some details:
In addition to lifting the caps on the number of students and schools that could participate in the choice program statewide, Walker is calling for a change to how the vouchers are funded for students added to the program and new limits on who can join.
After the program was expanded statewide two years ago, reports found the vast majority of students who joined were already attending private schools. Under the budget, those now in the outstate choice program would be allowed to remain. But those seeking to join the program going forward would already have to be attending a public school.
The vouchers are also now funded through a GPR appropriation. But funding for the outstate slots would be changed, under Walker’s plan. The schools who lose students to the choice program would have their aid reduced, and that money would then be pooled statewide and divided equally among the outstate choice students.
Doing so would smooth out the differences in the amount of state aid sent to districts based on property values, administration officials say. For example, districts with high property values receive less in state aid than those with low property values. The approach would ensure students from both districts would receive the same sized voucher, administration officials say.
Eh… it’s a step in the right direction, but I’m not crazy about it. What Walker is trying to do is make it so that he can expand school choice without adding spending. It’s a good goal, but a flawed way to get there.
The “problem” that Walker highlights is that many of the families who qualified for vouchers were already attending a private school. So the kids were already attending private school and it wasn’t costing the taxpayers anything, but now it is. It is an expense that the state taxpayers did not previously have.
This is only perceived as a “problem” in the context of government spending, but not in the overall purpose of school choice. The philosophy behind school choice is pretty simple. The taxpayers are obligated, both morally and constitutionally, to pay for an education for Wisconsin’s kids. In the existing system, rich families already have a choice to send their kids to the school of their choice. Means-tested vouchers level the playing field by facilitating the same choice for all families.
In this case, it is quite true that there are many families who qualify for vouchers – meaning that they are in the lower part of the income scale – were already sending their kids to private school. Some of them are making tremendous sacrifices to make it happen. Some are receiving financial aid through their churches or elsewhere. Some are managing to pay for it with support from their extended families. Now they can receive a voucher to make the sacrifice not as painful. So what? Why is this a “problem?” Are these families somehow less worthy than families who made different choices by sending their kids to public school? I certainly don’t think so. If people are worried that they were managing to send their kids to private school already, then lower the income threshold overall.
What I don’t like about Walker’s plan is that it creates a patchwork of rules that does not treat all people the same. Under his plan, families in Milwaukee and Racine are unaffected. Any of them still qualify irrespective of whether or not they already attend a private school or not. Families who already qualified for vouchers in the rest of Wisconsin can keep getting them. But families who either didn’t win the lottery last time, are just having kids come of age, or perhaps just slipped under the income threshold to qualify, may only receive a voucher if their kids attend a public school.
What a mess…
If this passes, expect a lot of families to enroll their kids in public school just to yank them out after the first day and move them to a private school with a voucher.
Like I said, it’s a step in the right direction in lifting the caps and looking for a better funding mechanism, but it should be a program that treats all families equally.
The most effective argument against expanding Wisconsin’s statewide voucher program is how much it could cost, Democratic gubernatorial candidate Mary Burke said Monday.
“We have to get out of the ideological warfare on this (issue) and let’s just talk dollars and cents, which resonates with just about everyone,” Burke said.
Burke’s comments were made to attendees of an invitation-only panel discussion at UW-Madison. About 40 people attended the event, which included National Education Association president Lily Eskelsen García. The discussion was moderated by Wisconsin Education Association Council president Betsy Kippers.
Burke pointed to a $1.2 billion projected total annual cost of the voucher system if it expanded, which she said would likely be at the expense of programs and teachers in public schools.
“We’re all smart enough to realize that if there’s a certain amount of funding that is going to the voucher program, unless the taxes are raised to pay for that or it comes from another part of the budget, it’s going to come from the public schools,” Burke said.
Notice that Burke is talking to a crowd packed with public school advocates, so she talks about what she thinks is the best way to combat school choice without leaving any room for anyone who supports school choice.
But to her point… the financial argument always falls flat for me. Yes, if the state sends money to a choice school because a kid opts to attend it, those dollars are going to be taken from the public school. But also, the PUBLIC SCHOOL DOESN’T HAVE TO EDUCATE THE KID. When a kid goes to a choice school, the public school district incurs zero cost to educate that kid. And the voucher funded by the taxpayers is less than what it would take to educate that kid in the public schools.
Here’s what we have when kids use the school choice program: taxpayers spend less; public schools have no cost; child receives an education more to the family’s liking. Who loses here?
But that’s just it. Lefties don’t oppose school choice because of the financials, educational rigor, or anything related to what’s best for the kid. They oppose it because it decreases the market share of a government institution. And we can’t have that.
MIDDLETON — Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker says he doesn’t have a number in mind for how much he wants to grow the private-school voucher program, should he be elected to a second term.
Walker said Wednesday after touring a sensor manufacturer in Middleton that he wants to grow the program in stages, so there is capacity for all the students who wish to participate.
Walker has been an advocate for school choice for years, so we know his heart is in the right place. Personally, I’d like to see something more bold. Let’s do full, statewide school choice that’s available to any family who chooses to participate. It is difficult to make any rational argument as to why the government should only allow an arbitrary few families a choice in a handful of districts while families elsewhere do not get that choice. Why is a kid struggling in the Hudson district, for example, any less deserving than one in Milwaukee?
