Rethinking the Welfare State: The prospects for ... - e-Library

Primary and secondary education 151
and to respond to the needs of their students.” 77 Not surprisingly, there are a variety of
different design challenges involved in the creation of voucher programs that must be
addressed in order to render these programs congruent with the public interest. However,
at this point, we focus primarily on the overall performance of these programs based on
the experience of several different charter experiments in the United States and abroad,
and remit the issue of program design to the next part of this chapter.
MILWAUKEE
The voucher program in Milwaukee was first established in the 1990–1 school year, was
only available to families with incomes at or below 175 percent of the federal poverty
level, was confined to 1 percent of Milwaukee public school enrolment, and its value was
only slightly more than $2,000. 78 In 1993, the limit was increased to 1.5 percent of
Milwaukee public school students and eligible students were awarded vouchers by
lottery. 79 The vouchers were worth approximately $2,500. In 1998, major changes were
made to the program; the voucher amount was raised to about $5,000; 50 percent of the
funding for the vouchers began to come from the Milwaukee Public Schools’ budget; and
the limit was substantially increased to 15 percent of Milwaukee students. 80
However, even after the 1998 reforms, the program was still beset by several structural
defects. First, the scope for choice introduced by the program is modest since only a
small number of students can use the vouchers and the majority of students are still
confined to public schools. Further, public schools do not stand to lose the entire perpupil
allotment for students that are lost to voucher schools. In 2002–3, the maximum
that a school could lose per pupil lost was $2,602. 81 This constitutes an improvement in
design over the previously used “hold harmless” policy, which guaranteed that schools
would not lose any of their state aid when students took vouchers, and which insulates
poorly performing public schools from the threat of competition, thereby dulling any
incentive for reform. Second, the voucher amount was still far below the per-pupil
government spending for Milwaukee. For instance, in the 2002–3 school year, per-pupil
spending averaged $11,436 while the voucher value was capped at $5,783. 82 Third, the
design of the program leaves open the possibility that some of the documented
improvements in academic achievements discussed below may be the result of selfselection
bias. Self-selection bias occurs because “families that are better-off may be
more likely to take advantage of school choice than those that are worse off because of
better access to information, greater ability to afford transportation, a higher penchant to
exercise educational alternatives, and greater generic experience with choice and
alternatives.” 83 Originally, vouchers were awarded on a first-come, first-served basis,
meaning that students who were more eager (or who had more eager parents) would be
voucher recipients. However, Goodman argues that, “evaluations of the Milwaukee
program and others demonstrate that they are not only enrolling students from lowincome
families, but they are also enrolling students with below-average scores on
achievement exams.” 84
There are three major studies of the performance of the Milwaukee program,
conducted by Paul Peterson, Cecilia Rouse, and John Witte. Paul Peterson found that
students who received vouchers and remained in the program for three or four years
gained 3 to 5 percentage points in reading and 5 to 11 percentage points in math, relative