And they have a deal

I thought about calling it "Glenn Grothman and I finally agree on something," since he's apparently not on board either with the compromise announced this morning on the phony cap crisis in the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program. I'm not sure what Grothman's beef is with the deal (nothing on WisPolitics yet), but mine is two-fold, as explained yesterday.

However, I would be willing to offer qualified support depending on what the full story is with this:

Require all voucher schools to administer a standardized test and report the scores for use in a proposed longitudinal study of the program.

Previous iterations of this idea have allowed for schools to opt out, so if this is truly all schools, then that's a step in the right direction. What we need, though, is for the results of testing to be made public, not buried in a long-term study. If the deal actually includes a provision that involves getting the results of these academic measures into the hands of parents, then that, combined with the accreditation measure, resolves most of my accountability questions. I have an email in to Chris Sinicki to see if I can get clarification on this point; if it is not what I hope it could be, I will lobby against this bill (and in support of bringing back DPI's original fair rationing plan in the interim)

I'm willing to take Doyle at his word that the funding flaw will be dealt with in the next budget (and, really, school finance generally should be on the table). We'll have to see what the stick-it-to-'em Republicans do with it.