{"id":15410,"date":"2024-11-20T21:26:00","date_gmt":"2024-11-20T22:26:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/?p=15410"},"modified":"2025-02-20T23:03:42","modified_gmt":"2025-02-20T23:03:42","slug":"fact-checking-wisconsin-school-choice-opponents-wrn-voices","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/?p=15410","title":{"rendered":"Fact Checking Wisconsin School Choice Opponents [WRN Voices]"},"content":{"rendered":"

This post originally appeared at https:\/\/schoolchoicewi.org\/fact-checking-wisconsin-school-choice-opponents-wrn-voices\/<\/a><\/p>\n

This is an opinion piece by Nicholas J. Kelly posted to Wisconsin Right Now<\/em> on November 20, 2024.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Wisconsin pioneered what has become a national movement to expand parent education options. From an initial program serving 341 students at seven schools, this year more than 181,000 Wisconsin students use choices that did not exist before the 1990\u2019s. Across the political spectrum, and in all media markets, Wisconsin voters approve and favor expansion.<\/p>\n

Opponents are undeterred, especially when it comes to programs that let parents choose private schools. More than 58,000 students are enrolled this year in those Wisconsin programs.<\/p>\n

For more than three decades, opponents have advanced falsehoods and half-truths to describe these programs. This is illustrated in an\u00a0error-filled attack<\/a>\u00a0in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel by the president of the Milwaukee Teachers\u2019 Education Association.<\/p>\n

Her false claims include a canard that the paper\u2019s education reporter debunked more than 20 years ago.\u00a0Here\u2019s a partial list of her falsehoods.<\/a><\/p>\n

Choice opponents enlist academic ideologues to give the appearance of credibility to their false attacks. A prominent example is Josh Cowen, on leave from Michigan State University, who will be featured in January at the state convention of the Wisconsin Public Education Network.<\/p>\n

Jill Underly, Wisconsin\u2019s Superintendent of Public Instruction, will be featured at a Happy Hour event following the panel where Josh Cowen will be present. Cowen and Underly can be expected to offer a narrative against school choice that opponents will rely on in the forthcoming legislative session.<\/p>\n

Cowen\u2019s affiliations and financial backing raise questions about his scholarly independence. He was warmly greeted this year at the annual convention of the American Federation of Teachers, where AFT President Randi Weingarten announced, \u201cWe have just started a new organization that Josh is going to be leading.\u201d Cowen also is a Senior Fellow at the Education Law Center, whose major funders include the two largest teachers\u2019 unions.<\/p>\n

Wisconsin\u2019s private school choice programs have been one focus of Cowen\u2019s attention and misinformation.<\/p>\n

In February 2023, he wrote (\u201cSchool Vouchers: There Is No Upside\u201d): \u201cDespite supporter rhetoric that voucher schemes are about new opportunities, the reality is 70-80 percent of kids in\u2026. Wisconsin [choice programs] were already in private school before taxpayers picked up the tab.\u201d<\/p>\n

This and other Cowen claims have become staples of anti-choice propaganda. Consider: \u201cIn state after state\u2026vouchers have gone to parents who already were sending their children to private schools\u2026\u201d So claimed Nancy Loome, president of The Parents\u2019 Campaign Research & Education Fund, in a Mississippi Clarion Ledger commentary in November.<\/p>\n

Yet it\u2019s simply untrue. The Wisconsin numbers this year are the exact opposite. According to DPI data, one in five new students in the statewide and Racine choice programs previously attended private schools. While comparable data for the Milwaukee program are not available, few would (aside from Cowen) seriously suggest that most Milwaukee choice students already were in private schools. As it happens, the number of Milwaukee choice students can be tracked closely to the decline over time in Milwaukee public school enrollment.<\/p>\n

Cowen falsely claims the same situation prevails in other states. Jay Greene and Jason Bedrick convincingly refuted him in 2023.<\/p>\n

Cowen has disputed a factual report from School Choice Wisconsin showing that private school choice students outperform public students on state tests. The data used in the report come directly from Underly\u2019s DPI.<\/p>\n

Cowen appears not to dispute the performance advantage that SCW documented. However, he told Ruth Conniff, at the Wisconsin Examiner, \u201cIt\u2019s possible to achieve exactly what they\u2019re describing simply by exiting the children who are the most expensive to educate.\u201d He offered no evidence because there is none. His claim was a version of that offered by the MTEA president in her Milwaukee Journal Sentinel commentary. The paper refuted it more than 20 years ago.<\/p>\n

Cowen resorted to a Wisconsin Watch report supposedly \u201cdocumenting strategies that Wisconsin voucher schools use to select children out after admitting them originally\u2026[W]e know for a fact that exits are where modern voucher programs truly choose their students\u2026[W]hen it comes to using vouchers it\u2019s the school\u2019s choice, not parental choice.\u201d<\/p>\n

However, the Wisconsin Watch report provided no evidence to buttress the false expulsion narrative. It \u201cdocumented\u201d nothing. School Choice Wisconsin (SCW) has responded to clear this all up. I responded to Coniff, Cowen, and Wisconsin Watch\u00a0here.<\/a><\/p>\n

Separately, SCW and the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty\u00a0refuted false claims<\/a>\u00a0that private choice schools discriminate against and underserve students with special needs.<\/p>\n

This story was updated to emphasize that Underly will be featured at a Happy Hour event.<\/em><\/p>\n

The post Fact Checking Wisconsin School Choice Opponents [WRN Voices]<\/a> appeared first on School Choice Wisconsin<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This post originally appeared at https:\/\/schoolchoicewi.org\/fact-checking-wisconsin-school-choice-opponents-wrn-voices\/ This is an opinion piece by Nicholas J. Kelly…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":55,"featured_media":196,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15410","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-school-choice"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15410","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/55"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15410"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15410\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15411,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15410\/revisions\/15411"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/196"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15410"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15410"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15410"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}