That Time of Year

DPI has announced that 171 schools have applied to be a part of Milwaukee's voucher program next year. That's more that the 154 applicants last year, and way more than the 117 choice schools open last September. (Last September is a distinction that will be important in a moment.)

One disturbing element in this whole thing--and there are so many to choose from--is this: "The new batch of applicants includes some established schools that have decided to join the program--for example, Milwaukee Lutheran High School--but many are start-ups." One of the arguments that I make regularly about the choice system as it exists here in Milwaukee is that it establishes very appealing incentives for anyone with a few friends and an occupancy permit to set up a "school" and start collecting tax dollars. (I have the highest respect for Milwaukee Lutheran--and there are many other schools, the majority, in fact, that do good work.)

How can this be? you might ask, especially those of you not from Wisconsin. Well, the answer is simple: Our Legislature, in its Infinite Wisdom (or, perhaps, blinded by its Sheer Idiocy) refuses to establish even a single academic standard that these choice schools must meet. Not. A. Single. One.

The only mechanism in place to make sure our taxpayer money is spent well is that a school must have a sound business plan. Does it matter what they plan to teach the kids? Goodness, no, we shouldn't interfere in that. But we have to make sure they'll stay afloat!

And, remember, these restrictions only came into place a year ago--after more than a dozen years of choice in Milwaukee. And these rules only came about because of massive fraud going on at some of these fly-by-night schools. You might think that problems like the ones described in the link at Mandela school would automatically be solved by the market. You know, parents would pull their kids out and the school was closed. Not so. As I wrote last spring:

The sad case of Alex's Academics of Excellency (yes, that's its real name) is instructive. This is a school that was ordered closed by Milwaukee's building inspectors in 1999, back when it was just Alex's Academic of Excellence. After moving repeatedly during the 1999-2000 school year, that summer the school's CEO (a convicted violent rapist) was jailed for tax fraud in an unrelated case. This was around the same time a private voucher program was refusing to send students to the school because it did not meet their academic standards. By the fall of 2003, the school was still open (now known as Alex's Acadmics of Excellence) and getting my taxpayer money while staff got stoned and drunk instead of teaching the children, and the state had to explain how its hands were tied.

This market approach to education is just plain stupid. It's like, stupid-and-a-half. Continuing on in that post from last spring:

The solution is clearly not the market--and what we're really talking about here is a free (or at least free-er) market for education. In any market, there are winners and there are losers. But we're not talking about losers like New Coke or Daewoo here--we're talking about children. Do we really, really want to say that the market, which guarantees losers among the winners, is the best way to educate our children?

This is doubly important based on the second thing that disturbs me about DPI's new list: "The list includes at least one person who was a key figure in a large voucher school recently closed by DPI order. Ricardo Brooks, who was an administrator of Academic Solutions, is listed as the administrator of a proposed school to be called Northside High School." Why does this matter? Because Academic Solutions is this year's poster child for failing choice schools.

I know this not just because of what I read, but because of what my students tell me--my students who have come to my school after Academic solutions closed following what can only be described as a riot. And they verify--and elaborate on--all the things I have read. Things like how the teachers stopped coming in to work after they stopped getting paid in November. Or things like absolute fraud in reporting the number students they should get paid for, so bad they called in the D.A.. Or things like this: "One parent, L* S*, said her daughter, T*, 16, had been doing well at the school, where she enrolled as a sophomore this year. She said her daughter had been getting F's at Milwaukee Marshall High School but was getting nearly straight A's at Academic Solutions." The curriculum of that school--confirmed for me by former students and by Milwaukee police officers who were there--was videos. Why not? The teachers aren't there. So the girl got an A for watching videos. Do you think that she really was getting the education she missed at the other school?

Ricardo Brooks, the guy from Academic Solutions who is looking to open a new school, said at the time of their appeal to stay open, "The school will be safe. [. . .] We don't have a bad school. We have a great school." This guy must have been blind to what was going on under his nose--serious fights every day. And now he wants to try again? Give me a break!

Any expansion of the voucher program will only lead to more of this. And this should serve as a warning to anyone in other states considering "choice." Let them look at Milwaukee: It is not what I would choose.