New reporting from Wisconsin Watch finds that nearly half of students attending private school in Wisconsin are using a publicly-funded voucher to put towards their tuition.
Wisconsin Watch data reporter Hongyu Liu used records from the Department of Public Instruction to look at how the voucher program has changed in the 35 years since it first began in Milwaukee.
Some basics on school choice and vouchers: A voucher is part of a school choice program where a parent can choose to send their child to a private school. By applying for a voucher through the Department of Public Instruction, tuition up to a certain amount will be paid for the child using taxpayer dollars. There are income limits in order to qualify for this program.
Liu spoke with WUWM education reporter Katherine Kokal about his reporting, which you can read here.
Here’s their conversation, which has been edited for length and clarity:
Katherine Kokal: You wrote that this signals a 'rapid reshaping of the state's educational landscape powered by state taxpayers.' Can you tell us a little bit about what you meant by that?
Hongyu Liu: Yeah, so back in the 1990s, when the Milwaukee voucher school programs first started, only 300 students enrolled in the first year. But this year, we have just reached over 60,000 statewide for the first time. So the sheer size of the programs right now in this year, it's just so huge to be simply ignored.
Following up on that, for the school year 2024-25, we have calculated that 46% of all private school students in Wisconsin have received vouchers across the state's four programs, which include the Milwaukee program, the Racine program, the statewide programs and the special needs programs. This year, the total headcount for voucher students have increased. Unfortunately, we do not have the total headcount for the private school students yet, but we are expecting to see around 50% of all the private school students in Wisconsin are going to be participating in the voucher program.
This program began in 1990, and when you adjust for the cost of inflation, it cost taxpayers around $1.78 million then. You ran the calculations for the cost of taxpayers this year. What'd you find?
So this year, we're expecting a little over $700 million by school year 2025-26. So this is a huge jump in comparison to how it started. To put it into a much closer comparison, the number has nearly doubled compared to the school year 2019-20, which was slightly before the pandemic. In the past decade, we have seen a steady and relatively fast growth in the total cost. From our analysis, we attribute this growth mostly by increased in participation and higher voucher funds per student each year.
A voucher can pay for anywhere from $10,000 to $13,000 in funding per student, correct?
Yes, correct. And also we have the special needs programs, which is up to $16,000 per student.
You also asked whether students do better academically once they've moved to a private school using a voucher. Were you able to find an answer to that question?
I found that it is definitely a heated debate in the academic world in terms of the academic achievements for students after they move to the voucher programs. I do want to highlight a study by Huria Jabbar, who is a professor at the University of Southern California. She reviewed 92 studies nationwide tracking academic achievements for voucher students between 1992 and 2015, and she concluded that she found mixed results.
Of course, when we're talking about achievements from students, the test scores are only one single aspect of this. There's much more that's really difficult to quantify, which requires further studies. And perhaps we need scholars to follow real people who have went through the transition and see what are their changes before and after joining the voucher program.
Hongyu Liu is the data investigative reporter at Wisconsin Watch. You can read his reporting here.
Katherine Kokal is the education reporter at 89.7 WUWM - Milwaukee's NPR. Have a question about schools or an education story idea? You can reach her at kokal@uwm.edu
