Research Expected to Answer Questions About School Choice in Milwaukee

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — The first in a series of research findings on the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program will be released Monday, Feb. 25. Eventually, that longitudinal research may answer many questions about whether a school voucher program can improve student outcomes. The reports being released are baseline reports in a five-year study.

At 1 p.m. Monday in the State Capitol in Madison, Wisc., researchers with the University of Arkansas, the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Westat, a contract research organization based in Rockville, Md., will issue five baseline reports examining the effects of the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program on the students, parents, taxpayers, schools and communities of the city and state. The program was the first if its kind when it started in 1990 and enrolled 17,749 students in 2006-07 at 122 private schools through the use of vouchers.

The results of the research project are expected to answer many questions about the effect voucher systems can have on improving academic achievement and other important student and family outcomes. The Milwaukee students enrolled in the choice program are from the inner city; 85 percent of them are from minority groups, and the majority comes from single-parent families, all risk factors for academic failure.

“Much of our research findings to this point are descriptive because these reports focus on the baseline year of this study, the 2006-07 academic year. Because it’s a longitudinal study, eventually we will be able to show whether or not the program produces positive student outcomes such as achievement gains,” said Patrick J. Wolf, professor of education reform and holder of the 21^st Century Chair in School Choice at the University of Arkansas, where the School Choice Demonstration Project is based. “With a total of 36 reports planned over the five years of this project, we have developed a highly sophisticated research design to generate reliable estimates of the effects of the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program on student achievement.”

Robert M. Costrell, also a UA professor of education reform and holder of the 21^st Century Chair in Accountability, authored a study of the program’s fiscal impact. He estimated that the school choice program saved the state of Wisconsin $25 million last year but that the savings were not distributed evenly among taxpayers. Those who pay statewide taxes and taxes on property outside Milwaukee received sizable fiscal benefits from the operation of the program while Milwaukee property owners pay higher property taxes as a result.

“The private schools in the choice program educated students for less public money than would have been spent on them in public schools, but the sizable savings to Wisconsin taxpayers were not universal,” Costrell said.

A second report of note is the longitudinal educational growth study led by John F. Witte, professor of political science and public policy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Dubbed LEGS, this study compares test scores and survey responses of students in the choice program with comparable students in public schools. The students’ parents were also surveyed.

For the comparison, about 2,700 students in each group were carefully matched by grade, neighborhood, gender, English-language learner status and current test scores.

Witte’s group of researchers found that parents of students in the choice schools had lower incomes but higher levels of education than parents of otherwise similar children in public schools. Both groups of parents expressed relatively high levels of satisfaction with their child’s school, but satisfaction with the choice schools was somewhat higher. The same was true of the students’ reported satisfaction, at least until ninth grade, when students in both groups reported they were not satisfied with their schools.

The authors of the longitudinal baseline report caution that the comparisons being made between parents and students in the two groups at this early point are merely descriptive. Readers should not conclude that the choice program itself was responsible for any differences reported here.

“Importantly, we will be tracking these similar groups of students over time, enabling us to produce reliable information about the effects of this important school choice program in future LEGS reports,” said co-principal investigator John Witte.

The other reports are a descriptive report on participating schools, a summary of school testing and an overview of the project. All of the reports are available at the School Choice Demonstration Project link at http://www.uark.edu/ua/der/SCDP.html on the department of education reform Web site.

The descriptive report paints a picture of a large and diverse set of parental choice programs in Milwaukee. The private schools in the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program are primarily, but not exclusively, religious and a majority of them enroll predominantly choice students. These schools also tend to be smaller with lower student-teacher ratios than Milwaukee public schools. Fewer teachers have graduate degrees in the choice schools than in the public schools, but the teachers in the choice schools average longer teaching experience.

The annual summary report of school testing shows test scores that suggest choice students tend to perform below national averages but at levels roughly comparable to similarly income-disadvantaged students in Milwaukee public schools.

In the overview, Wolf describes Milwaukee as a city of school choice. In addition to the parental choice program begun in 1990, Milwaukee now also has 56 public charter schools and a variety of magnet, community, open enrollment, and inter-district school choice options. Despite its abundance, school choice continues to be hotly debated.

“Our mission is to bring abundant and accurate information to these policy debates,” Wolf said. “Based on the research that we’re doing, over the next four years we will be able to say, 'This is what’s true’ about the program.”

The research project is funded by six diverse, major national foundations: the Annie E. Casey Foundation, the Joyce Foundation, the Kern Family Foundation, the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, the Robertson Foundation, and the Walton Family Charitable Support Foundation.