How is Milwaukee's school voucher experiment turning out?

This week, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel has a series on the school voucher system in Milwaukee (one of the few in the nation) and what it means for students, parents and the community.

For the seven-part series, Journal Sentinel reporters visited 104 of the 115 choice schools in Milwaukee. They were denied at the remaining nine.

According to the article: 9 voucher schools deny requests for classroom visits:
Together, the nine schools received more than $3.5 million in public money to educate children this year. Because they are private, schools in the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program are not required to allow members of the public - even officials of the state Department of Public Instruction, which provides their money - into their buildings. Building inspectors, on the other hand, must be allowed to enter.

The most remarkable thing about all of the research the Journal Sentinel has done might be the "questionable scenes" they witnessed while visiting some of the schools:

Academy of Excellence Preparatory School, 4340 N. 46th St., seven voucher students: Basically, an early childhood center. The first two times reporters visited, no one was there. The third time, there was a teacher with two students, a 4-year-old and 5-year-old. They were about to go to McDonald's.

This and the other examples are an extreme, but under the voucher system, these schools are given thousands of dollars in public money to take in students that would otherwise go to public school.

Also included in the series are examples of several choice schools making gains.

The biggest problem I have with school vouchers it that, even if every choice school is doing extremely well and each student in the program is benefiting, you're only taking them (and money) out of the public school system. This is different from the Chapter 220 program in Milwaukee that takes kids from public schools and moves them to different public schools with more resources, with a financial benefit from the school they are leaving and a tax benefit for the school they are coming to.

There is an argument that school vouchers will pressure public schools to improve, to do better when threatened with fewer students and less money. But an MPS school isn't going to magically improve when the few resources they have are taken away. You're not going to attract more qualified teachers this way. You're not going to foster a community commitment to schools. You're not going to maintain funding for "extra"-curricular classes that are really essential to a quality education that will provide a student to achieve success beyond high-school.

Congratulations to the Journal Sentinel for engaging in such an ambitious and in-depth look at the voucher system.