Democratic candidates wrong on school choice
On April 27, 1990, there was a lot going on in Wisconsin. A story on the Milwaukee Sentinel’s front page detailed a fight between Republican Gov. Tommy Thompson and Democratic State Sen. Russ Feingold over how long bovine growth hormone should be banned. In vetoing portions of a Democratic-authored “mini-budget,” Thompson eliminated collective bargaining for University of Wisconsin academic staff and added three circuit court judges in Milwaukee.
The last line of the Sentinel article added one final bullet point, almost as an afterthought. The day before, Thompson had signed a “parental choice” program which would soon allow 930 Milwaukee students to attend a private, non-sectarian school for free.
In the ensuing 28 years, Milwaukee’s school choice program has been fiercely debated both statewide and nationally. In 1995, the voucher program was extended to private, religious schools; during Gov. Scott Walker’s tenure, vouchers have been expanded statewide, drawing harsh criticism from Democrats sympathetic to teachers’ unions.
In a story by the Wisconsin State Journal’s Molly Beck on Sunday, seven of the top nine Democratic candidates said they would eliminate all four private school voucher programs in Wisconsin, with most vowing to phase the program out over a period of time.
Clearly, the days of bipartisan support for choice are a remnant of history. The program that passed in 1990 was part of a bill introduced by Democrats (choice was most notably championed by Milwaukee Assemblywoman Annette “Polly” Williams) and passed each Democrat-controlled house of the Legislature overwhelmingly (26-7 in the Senate, 86-8 in the Assembly.)
Eliminating choice would be a significant hit to the state budget, as choice students are less expensive to the state than public school students. Thus, when state superintendent and gubernatorial candidate Tony Evers complains that we are “struggling to fund our public school system,” the best thing for public schools would be to keep less expensive kids in choice.
Further, it’s not as if MPS could even handle the influx of choice kids back into the public schools. At a time when parents and teachers are already complaining about overcrowding in MPS classrooms, the infrastructure to add 27,000 children back into public schools simply doesn’t exist.
Eliminating choice would also harm economically disadvantaged children who are outperforming their public school peers on both the ACT and the Forward Exam.
This is perhaps why school choice continues to be popular throughout the state. In 2014, the Marquette Law School poll found that 49% of Wisconsinites supported expanding choice statewide, with 44% opposed.
In 2018, it’s hard to go a day without a liberal pundit bemoaning how “extreme” Republicans have become in recent years and how “polarized” we are as a country as a result. But the race between Wisconsin gubernatorial candidates to detonate school choice demonstrates that pandering to a party’s fringes in a crowded primary is a bipartisan phenomenon.