Belated Comment on Voucher Agreement

I’ll start by noting that I agree completely with Jay’s assessment of the sad attempt by conservatives to claim Doyle caved on school vouchers.

Now, on to the actual agreement.

Overall, I reluctantly support it. It’s not perfect, but the nature of a compromise is usually imperfection.

The one big hole in the agreement is that a funding flaw still plagues the program. It’s completely unreasonable to ask Milwaukee residents to pay $1000 more for each voucher student than they pay for a MPS student. Even John Gard called this a “legitimate concern.” So then why wait until 2007 to deal with it? The money is there—the state is essentially bankrolling $3000 annually for each voucher student. What’s the delay in shifting $1000 per voucher student back to Milwaukee residents? Even an outlined plan would’ve been nice, with some verbal commitments to follow through with it from both sides. The shunning of the funding flaw was almost enough to tank the agreement for me.

But, as it turns out, I pretty much like everything else in the agreement. I would’ve liked to see SAGE get the $500 per student increase Doyle initially proposed rather than only $250, but any increase to that proven program is a bonus to kids and schools across the state. I think the accreditation requirement is good, as are the plans to raise the income eligibility cap and eliminate prior-year eligibility rules. Setting the enrollment cap at 22,500 should keep the program solvent into the foreseeable future, particularly in light of the prediction by the Public Policy Forum that voucher enrollment is leveling-off.

I am hesitant about the standardized testing requirements, but not for the reason some of you may think. I’m not an opponent of the idea of standardized testing, but I am strongly against directly tying funding of any kind to standardized testing—particularly when that testing isn’t designed as locally as possible (the state, in my opinion, isn’t local enough). I’ve explained my feelings on standardized testing before (see here and here), so I won’t go into them on this post. I need more explanation of how the scores of these mandatory standardized tests will be used once reported to the Legislative Fiscal Bureau. They should certainly be used to scrutinize the voucher schools, but they should not be tied directly to funding like testing in the public schools is through No Child Left Behind—two wrongs, in this case, would not make a right.

Most of all, I’m happy an agreement was reached on this issue. I hope it moves quickly through the legislature. And the thought of needing to stomach another attack ad by Charlie Sykes makes me hope the school voucher program isn’t an issue on this scale for a long time.