A Tuesday release from the Department of Public Instruction that showed Milwaukee and Racine students in the state’s school voucher program scored lower on last year’s standardized achievement test than public school students raised questions among state legislators over the necessity of private school voucher expansion.
The report found approximately 13 percent of school voucher students scored proficient or advanced in math on the Wisconsin Knowledge and Concepts Examination and approximately 11 percent on the reading portion.
Meanwhile, 19 percent of public school students in Milwaukee performed proficient or better on math and approximately 14 percent did so on reading. Nearly 28 percent of Racine public school children achieved those rankings on math and 22 percent of students achieved that for reading.
The DPI’s report comes as the state legislature considers Gov. Scott Walker’s budget proposal to expand the state’s private school voucher program beyond Milwaukee and Racine districts. Most Republicans support the measure, but some state Senate Republicans and nearly all Democrats oppose it.
“This unaccountable experiment on our children has failed,” state Senate Minority Leader Chris Larson, D-Milwaukee, said in a statement responding to the DPI report. “Scoring lower in math and reading than their public counterparts, voucher schools in Wisconsin have done a disservice to future Wisconsin workers.”
However, School Choice Wisconsin argued in a news release that the DPI compared school voucher students to all public school students, rather than just public school children from low-income families, which skewed the results.
“If we are to have a true discussion about education performance, all the test data should be made available at the same time for the media and public to review,” the organization said in the release.
