DPI cracks down on delinquent voucher schools

No, I didn't miss this story from yesterday; I've been ungodly busy and stressed and even a little sick. Anyway, the story reports that Wisconsin's Department of Public Instruction, emboldened, perhaps, by the legislature's codifying some small enforcement authority a while back, has started the process of shutting down some of the "schools" sucking up your tax dollars in a vacuum of standards and accountability:

State Department of Public Instruction officials are questioning whether academic programs at three schools in Milwaukee's groundbreaking voucher program meet minimum standards set by state law to be considered schools.

Two of the schools have been notified they will be dropped from the program, although officials of the two say they expect to reverse that decision. The third has been formally asked to document aspects of its program, but no decision has been made on action.

In addition, state regulators said Monday they had ordered Ida B. Wells Academy, a voucher school that received more than $94,000 in state funds last year, out of the program because it had not met several requirements. Two other voucher schools have not received checks this fall because they have not met financial reporting requirements.

The witheld checks are not a new story, but the booting of Ida B. Wells is. The three schools being questioned for possibly not meeting the paperwork definition of a "school" are the Dr. Brenda Noach Choice School and the L.E.A.D.E.R. Institute, both of which have been in the program for some years; and the new Northside High School. The Dr. Noach school, of course, was started by Dr. Noach, who has "three doctorates and a Ph.D." L.E.A.D.E.R. (which stands for . . . ?) wouldn't let a Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reporter in last year because they weren't "ready" for outside visitors--maybe because they couldn't explain why 50 kids left their program between September 2004 and January 2005. Northside was started by Ricardo Brooks, the oblivious administrator of the now-closed-due-to-riots Academic Solutions who said, "We have a safe school" just before that school was shut down.

It's hard for me to believe that it's taken this long to crack down on some of these schools; it's harder for me to believe that now the Milwaukee Public Schools will find themselves responsible for catching the displaced students up to grade level without any state funds to pay for it--Third Friday is long past.

I again renew my call for some intrepid legislator to propose that all voucher schools be accredited by independent agencies (many already are) and that any new schools to the program operate for a school year without state voucher money to prove that they can offer a real, attractive curriculum to students. It's easy--just those two things would be all it would take to ensure, to a much greater degree, anyway, that your tax dollars aren't being wasted on schools like these.