Milwaukee, Wis., is home to the nation’s oldest and largest school-voucher program, the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program. After starting with just over 300 students in 1990, the program enrolled almost 25,000 students last school year. With open-enrollment programs, magnet schools, and a small number of charter schools, Milwaukee is one of the most “choice-rich” environments in America.
What has been the result? On the 2011 NAEP, a test given to a nationally representative sample in every state and to a select group of large districts, Milwaukee eighth-graders scored a 254 in math and 238 in reading. To put those numbers in some context, on those same tests the averages in Chicago were 270 and 253, respectively, and the large-city averages for the whole test were 274 and 255. On the NAEP, 10 points equates approximately to one year of knowledge, meaning that even compared with their peers only in other big cities, Milwaukee students are two grades below average in math and almost two grades below in reading.
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