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"It would be hard for me to trust any of the 'choice' schools now."- Mother of child who left voucher school - |
Call it a tale of two schools.
At Milwaukee Urban Day School in the heart of the city's urban core, children go about their studies with the mix of joy and discipline that would give any teacher heart.
Dressed in simple uniforms – navy pants and white shirts for boys, plaid jumpers for girls – that reflect Urban Day's parochial school heritage, students move through the halls respectfully and can barely contain their energy as they strive to outdo each other to answer a teacher's questions.
It's a scene that has won Urban Day, where students range from pre-kindergarten Head Start through 8th grade, widespread attention as a positive emblem for Milwaukee's controversial private school voucher program, granting low-income parents in the city school district the right to send their children tuition-free to private schools.
For parent Tony Higgins, whose daughter entered Urban Day under the Voucher program in 4th grade, one of the most important benefits of the school has been its strong parental involvement. At MPS, he said, teachers who raised problems about his daughter's behavior discouraged him from observing in the class. "I just felt like I was left out," he said. At Urban Day, "I have never had one of them tell me I'm not welcome."
Urban Day graduates about 20 8th graders any given year. Four years later, all but one or two go on to earn high school diplomas, and nearly 75% go on to higher education, said Principal Robert Rauh. "They leave here with a sense of responsibility with what it takes to be successful in school," he said. Teachers aren't required to be certified, but two out of three are, Rauh said. Of the five not certified, four are earning the necessary credits toward certification in the next few years.
But just a short drive away, the equally intense dedication of teachers and parent volunteers couldn't stop the near-collapse of another voucher school.
By the end of the 1995-'96 school year, Medgar Evers Academy had only a handful of students. The school's only salaried teachers had left, complaining that they hadn't been paid since January despite extensive parental fund-raising and nearly $70,000 in state money funneled to Medgar Evers under the voucher program.
Medgar Evers isn't alone. Two other voucher schools shut down last spring, owing back wages to employees. A fourth stayed open, but also had problems paying some of its workers.
This summer, another voucher school – the Waldorf School of Milwaukee – announced unexpectedly that it would not reopen this fall because of financial problems.
Because of the way the voucher legislation was written, there's little the state Department of Public Instruction can do to provide oversight to the schools still open.
The result has made even the most high-profile advocate of vouchers, State Rep. Annette "Polly" Williams, call for stricter legislation.
"If you want to get public dollars, you have to be open to public scrutiny," Williams said. "You can't just give out public dollars with no oversight."
Williams said the disappointments don't undermine her confidence in vouchers. And another voucher advocate, Dan McKinley, considers the debate is over as far as the concept of school "choice."
"I can't find anyone who believes that parents should be given less responsibility and that the school systems should be doing more," said McKinley, director of Partners Advancing Values in Education, a business-backed group providing scholarships enabling low-income students to attend private schools. "I think that everyone agrees that parents need to be able to have more power in their kids' education."
That may be true in principle, responds Steven Dold, assistant superintendent at the state Department of Public Instruction.
"I don't think there's much disagreement with the view that parents need to be involved with their child's education both at home and in the school," Dold said. But, he added, how to go about that – whether it would involve private school vouchers, whether it would include religious schools, and whether it would be available to parents of all incomes – remains very much open to debate.
"I think public schools are paying a price now for having been a bit unfriendly to family involvement," Dold said. "We need to do a significant job to bring parents back into that process." With private school vouchers, however, "a concern is that we (public schools) end up losing the most active parents and we are left with parents who are not as concerned as they should be for a child's education."
DPI originally backed a Williams-sponsored bill that would have required voucher schools to meet newer, more demanding requirements for governance. The bill also required more financial oversight, Dold said. But the agency withdrew its support when the bill was weakened in subsequent negotiations. With no plans to reconvene the legislature until next January, however, the bill is dead.
Even voucher advocate McKinley acknowledges there is probably room for more oversight. He compares the situation to one that arose several years ago, when a wide variety of technical and trade schools sprang up and qualified for state tuition grant money. Eventually regulations on those schools were tightened and the problem of fly-by-night schools ripping off taxpayers went away, he said. McKinley believes the Legislative Audit Bureau should study the history of trade school regulation as a potential model for regulating voucher schools.
But some schools have already campaigned against any legislation ensuring more accountability. Indeed, while some schools welcomed this reporter's visits last spring – and showed evidence of providing a solid education to their pupils – the vast majority refused. Many even failed to return repeated telephone calls.
As long as the Milwaukee private school voucher program was confined to established schools of long standing, participants probably undertook very little risk in enrolling.
While repeated studies by University of Wisconsin-Madison political scientist John Witte have found no evidence that students taking part in the voucher program outperformed public school students, Witte did consistently find that parents of voucher students were more satisfied with their children's education than parents of students who remained in MPS.
Last year's expansion of the program – and the subsequent opening of several new schools explicitly for the purpose of collecting voucher dollars – was a gamble that many participants lost.
The most obvious signs of trouble in the program came last winter, when two schools shut down unexpectedly, prompting a still-pending investigation by the Milwaukee County District Attorney's office.
Both Exito Education Center and Milwaukee Preparatory School closed suddenly in February after the DPI told officials that the schools had been overpaid under the voucher program and owed the state money: Exito $88,008, and Milwaukee Prep $111,843. The Exito shutdown forced parents of 61 children to find mid-year alternatives for their children; Milwaukee Prep's closure stranded another 111 children.
It didn't take a shutdown to convince 7th-grader Wynette McClelland and her grandmother, Johnnie Rogers, to realize something was amiss at Milwaukee Prep.
Rogers initially had had high hopes for the brand new school.
"I felt like if it was a 'choice' school, there would be something more than the public school was offering," Rogers said. With a class in Japanese, the school at first appeared to live up to its promise. Rogers soon lost faith, however. The first shock was the cost of a required uniform, two required gym outfits and book bag – $33.50 total . Then came the discovery that the only classes were Japanese, math, science and gym. Wynette said there were no literature, reading or English classes, and no social studies at her grade level.
Even her math course merely repeated what she had learned the year before, Wynette said. The kicker was a science project that required her to buy various electrical parts and a chemical solution. Rogers said when she asked a store about the chemical, she was told it was highly dangerous. She didn't buy any.
Despite having so few courses, Wynette had a long school day – getting to school at 7:20 a.m. and spending much of the day in a study hall, until the school day ended at 4:45 p.m.
"I kept saying, 'What are you all studying?' " Rogers said. "She wasn't taking enough subjects to have an extra hour of homework."
"They didn't have any books," Wynette said. "We learned off of worksheets." And there were no desks. "We had to sit in chairs and write on our laps."
Wynette said a school official kicked her out for the surprising infraction of chewing gum in mid-October, but by then she and Rogers had already soured on the program. Back at John Muir Middle School, she took an advanced math class last year and pronounced herself satisfied with her MPS experience.
But even as Milwaukee Prep and Exito – and now Waldorf – closed, two other marginal schools hung on through the rest of the year, and are poised to continue with the voucher program.
One is Woodson Academy, with 59 students, which collected more than $216,000 in voucher money for the 1995-'96 school year. Even so, state officials ordered the school to pay up to $4,483 to five Woodson employees who reported they had not been paid back wages. (All but one of the claims had been settled by early August.) Dissatisfaction prompted some Woodson parents and employees to picket the school last spring.
Another was Medgar Evers Academy, housed inside facilities it rented from the Boys & Girls Club Mary Ryan Branch at 3000 N. Sherman Blvd.
After seven years teaching in Ellsworth, Wis., public schools, Joan Peterson, who grew up in Racine, returned to Southeastern Wisconsin to teach at Medgar Evers Academy last fall. Peterson, who is white, enrolled her 8th-grade son in the school as a sign of her faith in Medgar Evers and in the vision of its founder and director, Avis Wright.
When this reporter visited the school in early April, Peterson was still on the job – even though she hadn't been paid for more than three months. At the time, Wright and Peterson blamed the lack of paychecks on last fall's State Supreme Court injunction that blocked the 1995 revisions to the voucher law. Those revisions had opened the program to religious schools and also had abolished a provision in the original law limiting participation to no more than 65% of a school's enrollment. Medgar Evers had been founded on the assumption that it would be able to enroll 100% voucher students under the new law. (A Dane County court has lifted the 65% restriction for this year.)
On April 23, Peterson and her colleague, Janice Kearney, went to Wright and asked her to sign a letter promising to pay them their past-due earnings. Peterson said Wright refused and berated the teachers in front of their students. Peterson and Kearney resigned.
In wage claims filed with the Equal Rights Division at the state Department of Workforce Development (formerly the Department of Industry, Labor and Human Relations), Kearney charged that the school owed her $8,826 in back wages since last November. Peterson, meanwhile, charged she was owed $7,262 since January. Both wage claims were in settlement negotiations in August.
Parent Dorothy Bell had had high hopes for Medgar Evers when she sent her 7-year-old daughter there for 1st grade last year under the voucher program.
"My children's teacher stressed homework and reading, which I thought was very good," Bell said. "The teachers, I found, were very dedicated."
Those hopes were dashed when Peterson was forced to leave, Bell said. With no teachers, she pulled her daughter out and transferred her to Carter Development Center, a central city alternative school that teaches urban Milwaukee children under contract with Milwaukee Public Schools. Bell now regrets there wasn't more oversight.
"I believe the state ought to be more strict with people starting 'choice' schools," she said. State authorities "should be able to look at the books."
For Lynda Carter, the failure to pay the two teachers was particularly disturbing because of the time she had spent helping the school to raise money.
Carter, the mother of a 6-year-old kindergarten student at Medgar Evers, was making too much money as an assembler at Briggs & Stratton Corp. to qualify for the voucher program. But she decided to enroll her daughter at Medgar Evers in the belief that children "do not get educated as well in a public school as they would in the private schools."
Carter was pleased with Peterson, her daughter's teacher. And she understood the school's financial needs, and demonstrated her loyalty by helping with fund-raising during her off hours.
So when she learned that Peterson and Kearney couldn't get paid, and had finally decided to call it quits, she sympathized with them and grew angry at the school and Wright.
"I'm a third-shift worker and would come home just in time to take a shower and do fund-raising," Carter said in an interview. "I sold quite a few pizzas and pies for my little girl."
Carter's daughter followed Peterson and Kearney to the Carter Development Center. Because Carter has since been laid off from her factory job, she believes she might qualify for vouchers in the coming year. But with last year under her belt, "it would be hard for me to trust any of the 'choice' schools now," she acknowledged.
Forceful criticism of Medgar Evers comes as well from Robert Harris, the school's former educational consultant who said he plans to sue in small claims court for his fee.
Harris, who has worked for the Milwaukee Public School system and also served as an administrator in private Milwaukee-area schools, said he believed in vouchers as a way of expanding options for poor Milwaukeeans. "Economics has a lot to do with the choices that we have in society," Harris said in an interview. He saw state-funded vouchers as a way of giving low-income city residents the same opportunities that wealthy members of the community had to opt for private school education.
But while he still holds that view, Harris said the story of Medgar Evers and other schools shows the need for strict accountability even by private schools if they're going to receive public money.
"We've got to be very careful about who starts schools," he said. "Too many people have been used as political pawns for other reasons."
Harris said the signs of problems to come at Medgar Evers were visible at his first meeting with the school's founder, Avis Wright. Wright had assembled an advisory board with members from the community, primarily local clergy, Harris said. But "there were no organized meetings, no minutes, no secretary, no officers," he said. "It wasn't an official board that could set policy. They had no power. She was telling the board what to do."
Harris said he began urging Wright to put off opening the school for another year. He questioned as well the school's decision to enroll a full kindergarten through 8th grade student body in its first year, instead of phasing in its enrollment. Wright ignored his advice and started up the school at full strength as scheduled. But by the following March, Harris terminated his consulting agreement. He originally had sought the $3,000 he says he was owed by filing a wage claim with the state. Investigators ruled he was an independent contractor, however, making the issue a business dispute and leading him to pursue a case in small claims court.
By the end of the school year, parents familiar with Medgar Evers say, only a handful of students remained.
Peterson, who has a contract with MPS to teach in the alternative kindergarten program at Carter beginning in the fall, said she still believes in the voucher program. But she is disturbed by what happened at Medgar Evers to her, her pupils and their parents. She is convinced that the state could act more forcefully to ensure that Medgar Evers – which along with Woodson Academy is on the list of schools likely to be approved for vouchers in the 1996-'97 school year – doesn't stay in the program.
In fact, however, state officials say their hands are tied.
"How can we guarantee that the schools offer a quality program, that they are robust and well-organized, and that employees of the schools have some assurances they will be treated fairly?" asked Steve Dold, assistant state superintendent of schools at the DPI. "Under the original law, we can make no such assurances."
So long as a school complies with the minimal requirement of meeting one of four performance standards and can verify the number of students enrolled, "the state is required to pay them money." Dold said. "There continues to be an element of risk."
"This continues to be as the legislature intended – an unregulated free-market situation," he said. "The guarantees for stability – some assurances of quality – that exist within the public schools simply are not required in this free-market experiment."
Photo: This sign was posted on the door of the Waldorf School of Milwaukee when it unexpectedly shut down over the summer. The school was housed in the St. Rita's Catholic Church and School building, 718 E. Pleasant St. The sign reads:
NOTICE: As agreed, the Waldorf School of Milwaukee will vacate this building no later than 5 P.M.. FRIDAY, AUGUST 30TH. All keys must be returned to Therese, rooms cleaned, and property taken away. Any property left by the School will become the property of St. Rita Parish. NO ADMITTANCE WILL BE ALLOWED AFTER AUG. 30TH. ALARM CODES & LOCKS WILL BE CHANGED. Any questions, contact Dave Corcoran, building manager. - Photo by Bill Hurley
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Posted September 5, 1996