Editorial: Preventing Bad Schools
By The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Last Update: April 25, 2006
New state law has strengthened quality control at voucher schools. To participate in the program, the schools must now be accredited - that is, get a stamp of approval from outside experts. This new rule, hammered out in negotiations between Gov. Jim Doyle and voucher leaders, amounts to a major breakthrough, making it far less likely that bad schools will mar the program in the future.
Education reporters Alan Borsuk and Sarah Carr explored the ramifications of the new requirement in Journal Sentinel articles Sunday and Monday. Most of the attention had focused on another part of the legislation: raising the cap on enrollment in the program from about 15,000 students to 22,500. Ironically, the accreditation requirement may act as a brake on enrollment by shutting down some schools and keeping others from opening in the first place.
And that's fine.
All kids deserve good schools, including poor and near-poor kids who get publicly financed vouchers payable for tuition at private schools. A virtue of the program is that it has prompted some innovative schools to open. A drawback is that it has prompted some duds to open as well.
The state had dropped from the program some schools that failed to meet certain accounting and other standards but lacked a tool for excluding schools failing to meet academic standards. Now, the state wields such a tool.
Naysayers have cited what they described as a loophole. The acceptable accrediting agencies include two voucher backers: Marquette University's Institute for the Transformation of Learning, led by school reformer Howard Fuller, and Partners Advancing Values in Education, which awards private scholarships to students who don't qualify for vouchers.
But these critics have misread the voucher movement, whose leaders are the last ones to want lousy schools to muck up the program.
Any schools counting on leniency from Fuller's institute may want to rethink that tactic. Fuller meant it when he said, "What I believe is, it's immoral to have our kids in anything less than an excellent school." And PAVE is selective about the schools where it gives scholarships - selectivity it will doubtless keep practicing as an accreditor.
The majority of voucher schools already are accredited. But some 50 of the 122 schools must now go through that process.
Thus, the critics of private school choice are far less likely to have bad voucher schools to kick around anymore. Public schools, instead of being accredited by a single agency, must meet numerous and sundry state and federal regulations. Wholistic accreditation of voucher schools, by experts who visit the sites, may, in fact, better assure quality than the disjointed process in Milwaukee's public schools.
The above editorial appeared in the April 25, 2006 Milwaukee Journal Sentinel