Voucher students in schools statewide will do better than voucher students in Milwaukee. Why do I say that? Not for the reasons you might guess. The statewide program has a requirement that a participating private school had to be in operation on May 1, 2013. That means there will not be a rush of start-up schools. The list of participating schools outstate will look a lot like a roster of Catholic, Lutheran and other well-grounded schools, I bet. The large majority of problems in Milwaukee’s voucher program, including both poor academic results and financial messes, have involved schools that opened after the program was launched.
The standardized testing program statewide is in a mess. We pretty much killed off our old tests. We’re killing off the one we tried this spring. So what’s next? That’s not set yet and, among other things, you have to wonder who’s going to take the results seriously when there are different tests every year.
Accountability overall is in a mess.Beyond the budget process, the Legislature was unable to agree on how to revise the system for rating schools and for doing something about low-rated schools. Which means not much will be done about those schools in the foreseeable future — including, low-performing voucher schools in Milwaukee. Some Republican legislative leaders have said doing something about those schools is a high priority. Nothing in the budget or other legislative action backs that up.
Suddenly, county executives are important. As the budget stands, both the Milwaukee and Waukesha county executives will be given unprecedented and hefty powers to deal with schools. Who knew they were qualified to be school system leaders? Wow.