More on School Choice Benefits

School Choice continues to move ahead in our nation. The Milwaukee Voucher Program, the nation’s oldest school choice voucher program now in its 20th year, has 21,000 students in 111 private schools. Their graduation rate is 18% higher than for Milwaukee’s public schools. This is especially noteworthy for two reasons: (1) by law, the “voucher” students must come from low income families, while public school students include more well to do families; (2) the “voucher” students are funded at the rate of $6,400 per pupil, while the public school students are funded at the rate of $14,000 per pupil. Hence, the conclusion, indicated many times before in other studies, is that school choice with tax credits or scholarships (or “vouchers”) set well below public school costs not only helps students and parents (esp. low income students), but also helps taxpayers. Sadly, President Obama, while proposing a 9% increase in federal spending on education in these critical fiscal times will say nothing regarding the school choice issue. The apparent reason is his fear of upsetting the powerful public school teacher unions---the NEA and the AFT. Hypocritically, Mr. Obama won’t send his daughters to the DC public schools, choosing instead the ritzy Sidwell’s Academy at a cost of $28,000 per student. Yet, he is allowing the DC Scholarship program, which was greatly favored by his fellow African-American parents in DC, to shut down because he fears the teacher unions. This hurts students and taxpayers.