Debate over school choice finds itself in new territory with proponents and opponents alike fighting over accountability. Opponents of school choice like Rep. Mark Pocan, D-Wis., made the news when he pressed Education Secretary Betsy DeVos to include some undefined accountability standards in any federal school choice program. Among education reform proponents, a division has emerged on the balance between governmental accountability and accountability to parents.
A new study from the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty and School Choice Wisconsin is shedding fresh light on this question with a look at the country’s oldest voucher program. Using a decade of data on the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program, this study finds that voucher schools are far from unaccountable, facing extensive state regulations along with parental accountability. While these regulations are chiefly financial, they have the effect of removing poor performing academic schools and increasing enrollment at high-performing academic schools.
Private schools in the voucher program are first and foremost subject to extensive barriers to entry. For example, a school must prove financial viability and begin the accreditation process prior to gaining admittance to the program. Once a school has joined the MPCP, they can have their voucher payments withheld, or the school can be removed from the program altogether if they fail to comply with the legion of state regulations.
These regulations, which are administed by the state’s Department of Public Instruction, have been fine-tuned over time to become more effective. Many of the existing financial and compliance accountability laws were even modified by school choice adovcates in the state who wanted to ensure that high-quality school operators were gaining access to the program.
The data shows these regulations are being used; DPI is actively utilizing the accountability laws, with financial viability issues and failure to complete necessary forms among the most commonly cited reasons for a school’s sanction. We found that the schools that were sanctioned were predominately start-up schools, or new, unestablished schools that joined the program the same year they first opened.
The primary effects of these financial and compliance regulations was to remove poor-performing schools from the program. In fact, the largest factor predicting a school’s departure from the program was low test scores.
This makes intuitive sense — if a business is mismanaging its finances, it is likely that there will be spillover effects to the product that a business produces. In the context of a school, that product is the learning environment. As a result, the schools that persist in the program supply a higher level of academic achievement to the MPCP.
A similar story holds when we consider parental accountability. Parents appear to be choosing schools based primarily on safety records (measured with 911 calls). Some might consider this a normatively “bad” reason to choose a school, though it may be perfectly rational in a high-crime city such as Milwaukee. However, safety and academic performance are highly related. Thus, the movement of students to schools with higher academic quality is a positive spillover effect of the decisions parents make based on safety.
This study explicitly does not make the claim that all regulations are serving the voucher program well. EdChoice has produced work that calls Milwaukee’s voucher program one of the most-regulated choice programs in the country. Recent research has even shown that overregulation can prevent high quality schools from joining a choice program. Wisconsin recently passed Act 36, removing and streamlining a host of regulations on the voucher program because they weren’t serving their intended goal.
This study ultimately serves to refute, once and for all, the accusation that private schools in the Milwaukee voucher program are unaccountable. In this case, smart regulations, crafted in consultation with stakeholders, have served to increase school quality in one of the most important efforts to expand educational opportunity in the country.
Parental choice and financial accountability laws in Milwaukee have worked together to kick bad schools out of the school choice program. While this study does not settle the accountability debate, it directly rebuts talking points from opponents of education reform, such as Congressman Pocan.
Will Flanders is research director of the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty. Morgan Johnson is director of policy & research at School Choice Wisconsin.
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