If your school is considering participating in one of Wisconsin’s choice programs, consider this: School Choice Wisconsin is here to help with applying and onboarding. ChoiceWords attended a session in September with a school looking to join one of Wisconsin’s choice programs. The essential informational session was run on-site at the school by School Choice Wisconsin Vice President of Operations Carol Shires. Shires is among the onboarding experts at SCW.  The school was excited about a future with the choice program, but had many financial, paperwork, deadline, state regulatory and enrollment questions.  Each school’s situation is different. At the September…

Good news! Choice is growing in Wisconsin! According to numbers released today by the state Department of Public Instruction: • The state’s four private school parental choice programs reported a headcount of 52,189. This was an increase of 6.7 percent over 2021. 4K headcount in the private school parental choice programs increased by 8.5 percent, kindergarten increased by 5.1 percent and grades 1-12 were up by 6.8 percent. • Independent charter schools reported a headcount of 11,150, an increase of 4.5 percent from September 2021.  • Wisconsin’s total school district headcount was 807,657, a decline of 0.85 percent from September…

“You’ve got half the community here,” someone shouted at Edward DeShazer as he welcomed students into Greater Holy Temple Christian Academy Thursday. “We want the whole community,” he responded. Positive energy was in abundance this week as the K4­–8 school held a grand opening of its new home, at 9520 W. Allyn St. in Milwaukee, the former Fletcher Elementary. Uniformed students walked the red carpet Thursday leading into the school to the beat of “Ain’t No Stoppin’ Us Now.” The choice school overcame a snag this week, as the Department of Public Instruction put the brakes on the opening due…

Nataly Andrade is the new outreach coordinator for Hispanics for School Choice/School Choice Wisconsin. It’s shaping up to be a school year of opportunities and challenges for Hispanics for School Choice. There are many opportunities to educate parents around the state about school choice. The challenge lies in being able to reach parents and educate them about their options on school choice, getting the info to them when they need it the most. Many parents in Wisconsin, Hispanic and otherwise, still lack information on how to access the state’s four choice programs and navigate the many barriers to enroll in…

♦ Life Happens: A ChoiceWords series ♦ The state needs to add additional enrollment periods for the Wisconsin Parental Choice Program. The state should also end the program’s grade-level entry points, which can prevent families from accessing the program for years. This is the first in a periodic ChoiceWords series. Do you know in April what you’ll be doing in September? Do you have all the paperwork filed for those plans? Maybe. But we all know life happens and you don’t know what your situation may be six months from now. The reality that “life happens” bedevils parents in the…

As the school year starts, top of mind for many schools in Wisconsin is the current teacher shortage. The problem has garnered lots of nationwide coverage. Staff shortages plague both public and private schools in the state. In mid-July, School Choice Wisconsin did a survey on this topic. The 133 choice schools that responded reported 355 open positions at the K­–12 level. This is a much higher than usual rate, according to longtime education administrators at School Choice Wisconsin. Forty providers offer teacher preparation programs in the state. To become a licensed teacher, one must follow one of four pathways. The road can…

First-ever drop in math, biggest drop in reading in 30 years Fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic and pandemic policies continues to manifest across the nation. The latest: Reading and math scores of 9-year-old students nationwide dropped between 2020 and 2022, according to results released today from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES). A Wall Street Journal story on the scores cites experts who say it could take decades for the worst performers to rebound. “These are some of the largest declines we have observed in a single assessment cycle in 50 years of the NAEP program,” said Acting NCES…

Did you know that there’s an academic chair focused on school choice? ChoiceWords decided to look into this. We caught up with the man who occupies the chair, Patrick Wolf. Wolf, Distinguished Professor of Education Policy and 21st Century Endowed Chair in School Choice in the Department of Education Reform at the University of Arkansas, has kept one of the most trained eyes on school choice as it has experienced major growth across the country. Wolf got into school choice in part because his graduate school mentor was Harvard’s Paul Peterson, another well-known figure in the field. “Once I got…