Wisconsin started the school choice movement 35 years ago. Since its inception, the program has served hundreds of thousands of students across the state and now serves nearly 60,000 students each year. Yet the future of these programs remains unsettled.
Although Wisconsin voters support school choice by roughly a two-to-one margin, several candidates for governor have pledged to bring the programs to a “responsible close,” while others are calling for restrictions or major changes. Before that debate goes any further, it’s worth asking what the record actually shows.
Critics have long questioned whether school choice improves student achievement. Studies conducted over several decades have produced varying results. But new research suggests that some of that inconsistency may come from measuring the effects too soon. If we are going to judge school choice fairly, we need to give students enough time to benefit from it. That’s the central finding of new peer-reviewed research we co-authored examining the effectiveness of Wisconsin’s private school choice programs that shows significant additional growth in reading relative to public schools across all three programs.
Our research shows school choice benefits students over time
This research, published July 7 in the Journal of School Choice, represents the first ever student-level analysis of the Wisconsin and Racine Parental choice programs. Using data collected from the Department of Public Instruction, we matched students in the choice program with similar students in public schools.
Here’s what we found. Across the Milwaukee and statewide programs, the amount of time that a student participated in the choice program mattered. Students who participated for only one year generally showed little measurable difference from similar public school students. But students who remained in school choice for multiple years experienced significantly stronger growth in reading achievement.
Students were matched based on prior achievement, family income, race and ethnicity, grade level, English-learner status, and region. In other words, low-income African American students in Milwaukee in the choice program were compared with low-income African American students in public schools in Milwaukee, et cetera. This is a widely accepted method for evaluating education programs when students cannot be randomly assigned to schools. We also tested the results using multiple statistical methods, each reaching similar conclusions.
While no observational study can eliminate every possible source of bias, this represents one of the strongest approaches available when randomized experiments aren’t possible. A second study using the same methods for Milwaukee reached similar conclusions, and is currently still in the peer-review process.
In Milwaukee, statistically significant benefits appeared after two years. In the statewide Wisconsin Parental Choice Program, meaningful gains emerged after three years. Four years of participation in either program was associated with reading gains equivalent to more than an additional year of learning compared with similar students in public schools.
Racine’s program also produced striking results. Because it serves few students, we could not reliably separate the results by each year of participation. But overall any participation was associated with gains equivalent to nearly two additional years of learning.
Why might the benefits take some time to emerge?
First, we must look at why families might be motivated to change schools. Unlike the arguments that choice schools are “creaming the crop” with the best students, many families choose to enroll their kids in Wisconsin’s private choice programs because they struggled in their previous environment. Some arrive academically behind. Some may have faced a dangerous environment or bullying. All need time to adapt to new teachers, classmates, and school cultures. Expecting dramatic improvements immediately ignores the realities faced by many of these children.
Instead, the new evidence suggests something encouraging: persistence pays off.
Long-term participation in choice corelates with reading gains
The findings are also consistent with what was found as part of the examination of the Milwaukee program twenty years ago by the School Choice Demonstration Project at the University of Arkansas. Long-term participation matters more than short-term participation was found to correlate with reading achievement gains, as well as other lifelong benefits like avoiding becoming involved in criminal behavior and enrolling in college. Our new analyses confirm that similar patterns in the state’s newer school choice programs.
Of course, no single study should end the debate. We acknowledge important limitations, including the possibility that families choosing school choice differ in ways that cannot be fully measured. We also note that the study occurred during and after the COVID-19 pandemic, when public and private schools often operated differently, with many private schools remaining open while districts remained closed. These are fair caveats that deserve consideration.
These findings have important implications for policymakers considering proposals to restrict or eliminate Wisconsin’s choice programs. Ending these programs would not simply uproot and reduce educational options for tens of thousands of low- and lower-middle income families that are often trapped in failing school systems. It would reduce the benefits accrued to society as a whole from students made more self-sufficient and productive through their participation.
This research offers the most comprehensive evidence to date on Wisconsin’s newer private school choice programs. It finds that school choice can provide students with a meaningful opportunity for greater academic growth—but that those gains do not necessarily happen overnight.
Whether someone supports school choice or prefers traditional public schools, we should all agree on one principle: education policy should follow the evidence. And when the evidence shows that student outcomes benefit from sustained participation, the question should be how to make those same opportunities available to more children – not to take them away.
Will Flanders, PhD. Is the research director at the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty. Dr. Scott Niederjohn is Professor of Economics and Director of the Free Enterprise Center at Concordia University Wisconsin in Mequon.
This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Time is needed to examine effectiveness of school choice | Opinion
Reporting by Will Flanders and Scott Niederjohn, Special to Milwaukee Journal Sentinel / Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
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By Will Flanders and Scott Niederjohn, Special to Milwaukee Journal Sentinel | USA TODAY Network
