MacIver News Service | March 30, 2011
[Madison, Wisc...] The latest in a series of long-term academic studies tracking the Milwaukee Parental Choice Programs shows that 94.3 percent of pupils who stayed in the MPCP through their high school career graduated, a rate much higher than attained by Milwaukee Public Schools (74.8% ) and just below suburban districts such as Waukesha and Wauwatosa.
University of Arkansas professor Patrick J. Wolf heads their School Choice Demonstration Project and has been conducting the five-year longitudinal study as authorized by a 2005 Act of the Wisconsin legislature. On Wednesday the Project released their fourth annual report.
“In terms of concentrated area where parents have a lot of school choices, Milwaukee is perhaps exceptional,” said Wolf. “In Milwaukee, School Choice developed organically, over a long period of time, with a lot of fits and starts and twists and turns; so that makes it a really fascinating place to evaluate these kinds of programs.”
Among the findings:
- Students in the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program have higher graduation rates than similar students in MPS
- That graduation rate is significantly higher for choice students who attended the same school for four years as opposed to their MPS counterparts who did the same
- Students in the Choice program are more likely than MPS students to go on to four-year college
- Students in the Choice program are less likely to drop out of high school than their MPS peers
- More than 20,899 students attended the 115 schools that participated in the MPCP for the entire 2009-2010 school year.
- Most students (82.4 percent) in MPCP schools are minority, compared to 88.9% of MPS students.
- Schools in the MPCP offer programs and services similar to those offered by MPS including: art programs (77.6 percent), after school programs (70.1 percent), tutors (60.9 percent), gymnasiums (88.4 percent), and programs for students with learning problems (71.3 percent).
- The average student-teacher ratio is smaller for MPCP schools (14.7) compared to MPS (16.3).
- The average per-pupil costs at participating schools for the 2008-09 academic year (the most recent figures available) was $7692 while the maximum scholarship amount was $6,607. Since then the maximum scholarship amount has been lowered to $6,442—the lowest maximum scholarship amount since the 1997098 school year
- There was no significant difference between MPS students and MPCP students as measured by three years of achievement on the state standardized test scores.
In an obvious attempt to preempt the release of the latest findings of the longitudinal study, Wisconsin’s Department of Public Instruction (DPI) released a comparison of student scores from the Wisconsin Knowledge Concept Examination (WKCE), the statewide standardized test.
That snapshot did not paint a favorable picture for the Choice Program.
However, in August of 2009, Wisconsin Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Evers, who heads the DPI, announced plans to scrap the WKCE because of its widely acknowledged deficiencies.
“A common sense approach to assessment combines a variety of assessments to give a fuller picture of educational progress for our students and schools,” Evers said at the time. “Our next statewide assessments must balance the needs of students, teachers, and parents as well as providing public accountability for student learning,”
Professor Wolf says the longitudinal study takes a different approach than measuring the proficiency of students on one test on one day a year.
“Longitudinal studies have a major benefit over snapshot studies, like the DPI report” said Wolf. “We can basically look at achievement gains, for similar students, over time. I think it’s very important to avoid really limited reports and very limited views of what the voucher program is or is not accomplishing.”
The findings were released at a forum on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus, which was jointly sponsored by the Robert M. La Follette School of Public Affairs and the Center for the Sutdy of Liberal Democracy.
MacIver News Service's Bill Osmulski has more in this video report from Madison.
