Skip to content
Ali Schwartz
Ali Schwartz
For Immediate Release Contact: Jim Bender, Government Affairs and Public Policy Consultant School Choice Wisconsin Brookfield, WI – The following is a statement from School Choice Wisconsin’s Government Affairs and Public Policy Consultant, Jim Bender on Governor Evers’ budget provision calling for the freezing of enrollment in the Parental Choice Programs: “There is a clear divide in education in Wisconsin today – not between public and private, but between open and closed. One small, but very influential camp, is utilizing resources to force kids to stay home, the other is working night and day to provide in-person instruction in a…
Read MoreFor Immediate Release Contact: Jim Bender, School Choice Wisconsin [email protected] 414.319.9160 Brookfield, WI – In celebration of National School Choice Week, School Choice Wisconsin is releasing an OnMessage statewide education poll that shows Wisconsin parents have a strong desire for educational flexibility during the COVID pandemic. School Choice Wisconsin commissioned the poll of 800 Wisconsin likely voters in the late fall of 2020 to collect reactions to school closures, enrollment options and other aspects of parental empowerment in education. Major findings: 62% want schools to be open with some form of in-person education. (Yesterday, the CDC released a study supporting…
Read MoreAfter more than three decades of school choice in Wisconsin, choice stories are everywhere. The Jaeger family has one of them. For over 30 years, The Jaeger family has found a wellspring of community and opportunity at Trinity Freistadt in Mequon, WI. Their children attend the school which is connected to a ministry with a heritage that reaches back to 1839. On the cusp of graduating 8th grade, Tori Jaeger’s aspirations of attending a premier high school are closer each day. With her ability to see the big picture and recognize her growth, she credits her progress to her surrounding…
Read MoreA grandfather struggles to escape a robbery and is shot dead on the porch while his helpless grandchild, still growing in the womb, restlessly waits to emerge into a sometimes violent and hopeless world. Joquori Brown’s life began as that child with a beautiful defiance. Defiance against poverty that surrounded him as one of eight children born in a Milwaukee ghetto near Palmer and North Ave. Defiance against a failing education system that held little hope for a young black child to emerge from a life of ignorance. Defiance against the rage of violence and drugs on the street that…
Read More(Audio) Many schools have reached out to us with questions about the recent change in Special Needs Scholarship Program administrative rules and how they might affect your school’s participation. If you are currently in the SNSP or considering the program, and were not able to join the conference all on 12/18/19, you can listen to the recording through the link below. We’ll review the expiration of Emergency Rule 1911 and what you should expect moving forward. school choice · SNSP Administrative Changes 12/18/19
Read MoreContacts: Susan Mitchell, 414.232.4324 Jim Bender, 920.222.5427 Brookfield, WI – School Choice Wisconsin (SCW) President Jim Bender will step down at the end of the year to form his own business, Bender Consulting, LLC. SCW will begin immediately to recruit a new president, SCW board chair Susan Mitchell said. “Jim has led SCW through a decade of major growth in programs, participating schools, and students,” Mitchell said. “Thanks to his leadership, the number of programs has quadrupled, participating schools have tripled, and the number of students served has doubled,” she said. The pandemic has shown parents the value of the…
Read MoreFrom the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: “Milwaukee schools and universities that have been planning to offer face-to-face instruction this fall may need to shift gears after the city health department quietly enacted stricter guidelines for when in-person classes may resume.” Later in the article, Jim Bender explained that schools had been blindsided by Milwaukee area health officials, “Nobody saw this coming. Schools did not have any sort of consultative role in these changes. And they didn’t get any communication from the health department that the changes were being made.” Read the entire article.
Read MoreEspinoza v Montana Ruling Finds Montana DOR Violated First Amendment In a 5-4 decision, Justice Roberts writes that prohibiting religious schools from publicly-funded education programs violates the First Amendment, Free Exercise Clause of the US Constitution. In a shot directly at the basis for Blaine amendments of many states, banning entities from public programs simply because they are religious is discriminatory. In particular, the Alito concurrence focuses on the fact that “Montana’s no-aid provision retains the bigoted code language used throughout state Blaine Amendments”. “Today’s ruling adds further structural support for school choice programs to include all types of schools…
Read MoreWisconsin Program Sees 37% Growth Enrollment for the Parental Choice Programs for 2019-20 show significant growth once again per DPI. Please see the tables below for headcount data and important information about DPI data releases meant to mislead the media/public with regards to prior year enrollment. “Year over year, the Parental Choice Programs continue to grow across Wisconsin,” Jim Bender said. “Combined with public school open enrollment and independent charters, more than 12% of students are educated with public dollars outside their resident district. That number continues to increase every year.” WPCP – District limits are at 4% of enrollment…
Read MoreFor Immediate Release September 12, 2019 Contact: Jim Bender DPI gets an “F” on transparency by withholding crucial data from media Test results released yesterday by the Department of Public Instruction (DPI) show that again this year, students in the Parental Choice Programs are outperforming their full-income, public-school peers on the ACT. As with all test data, a one-year snapshot of raw data has limitations but the trend of higher scores for students on a voucher is great news for both students and taxpayers. New this year were the results of the Aspire Exam as part of the ACT suite.…
Read More