Charter schools help stabilize MPS enrollment

Just when it seemed like the annual trends involving the education landscape of Milwaukee had become predictable and boring, a couple of unpredicted things happened.

Around this time every year since 2008, I’ve put together a chart showing where Milwaukee children are getting a publicly funded education, sector by sector. I try not to get too hung up on “sector wars,” but the trends for school enrollment are crucial to understanding our complicated education scene.

In summary, the percentage of students enrolled in the conventional Milwaukee Public Schools system was falling by 1 to 2 percentage points almost every year. Use of publicly funded vouchers to attend private schools, almost all of them religious, was rising each year (this year, just under a quarter of the city’s students are in the voucher program). Enrollment in non-MPS charter schools was rising each year. And the number of Milwaukee children going to public schools in the suburbs rather than in MPS, using the state’s open enrollment law, was rising substantially.

The bottom line was that the day was drawing closer when fewer than half of the children of the city would be in the traditional MPS system, which I thought potentially would be an important turning point for the stability of the MPS system. And each year, the school enrollment landscape overall became more divided up.

Two things have changed in the last several years:

Open enrollment numbers have gone down. In the fall of 2013, there were 6,906 kids who lived in the city and went to public schools outside the city. This fall, the number is down for the third year in a row. The total is 5,758. The key reason, best as I know, is that suburban districts have reduced the number of seats they are making available to children from other school districts.

In addition, enrollment in the program called Chapter 220, which allows minority kids from the city to go to predominantly white suburban schools, has dwindled. In 2015, the Legislature cut off new enrollment in Chapter 220. This fall, only 1,040 Milwaukee students are in the program. A couple of decades ago, more than 5,000 were “220ing” into the suburbs.

Enrollment into the suburbs remains an important fact in Milwaukee education. But it’s not as big a deal as I was expecting it to be by now.

Enrollment in charter schools not connected to MPS has dropped. Charters are independent, publicly funded schools. In Milwaukee, schools can get authorization from three government bodies to operate: MPS, the Milwaukee Common Council and the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (with oversight by the UW System Board of Regents). Suffice it to say that within the world of school leaders, who you’re authorized by is a big deal.

The number of students in schools under the City Hall or UWM umbrellas rose sharply for years. This year, it dropped, from 8,837 a year ago to 7,303 now.

Why? Two primary reasons: First, a couple of charter schools closed (Urban Day, North Point Lighthouse) and one (King’s Academy) switched from being a charter to being a private school in the voucher program. Second, a large local charter operation, Milwaukee College Prep, switched authorizers for two of its schools from UWM to MPS. It already had two other schools connected to MPS. That move alone meant a 1,000student drop in UWM enrollment and a 1,000-student gain for MPS (which will translate into millions of dollars in additional state aid for MPS in coming years).

Overall, MPS enrollment is stabilizing. The number of students in the main MPS system is still going down, but only slowly. As of this fall, just under 56% of Milwaukee students getting a publicly funded education are in the conventional Milwaukee public schools, about the same as a year ago.

The number of students in the MPS system as a whole, including the independent charters authorized by the School Board, is up 1.7% from a year ago, but the increase is entirely due to more kids being in independent charter schools.

A second upshot: Even as the City Hall and UWM rosters of schools get smaller, they’re arguably getting better. Overall results for these schools are better than for MPS or voucher schools overall.

Good decisions by authorizers is a big reason why. Some charters that were getting poor results have closed. The loss of Milwaukee College Prep weakens the lineup, but there are still excellent and large charters connected to City Hall and UWM. There are questions marks about the future of authorizing by those two bodies, but there is a strong case for keeping a lot of the remaining schools vibrant.

A third upshot: MPS Superintendent Darienne Driver suggested recently that all charter schools be brought under the MPS umbrella. That may not be as far-fetched as I initially thought.

Although MPS has been more welcoming to charters lately, there is a long history of up-anddown relations that would make charter leaders wary. But MPS has some tools that might be persuasive, such as the ability to offer more money per student than UWM or City Hall (that was a big factor in the Milwaukee College Prep switch).

And who knows what the Legislature is going to do on any number of education issues, including charters, during the budget season in a few months? Maybe something will happen that will affect the Milwaukee scene.

In total, Milwaukee may be switching from having four pretty strong streams of schools (MPS, vouchers, non-MPS charters, and open enrollment) to having two big streams (MPS and vouchers) and two more modest (but still important) streams.

Trends often don’t go in straight lines. The changes happening now could do a lot to shape education politics and decisions ahead.