{"id":16687,"date":"2025-05-29T22:09:11","date_gmt":"2025-05-29T22:09:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/?p=16687"},"modified":"2025-05-29T23:03:15","modified_gmt":"2025-05-29T23:03:15","slug":"taxpayers-need-more-simplicity-and-transparency-not-misleading-arguments-meant-to-stoke-fears-of-successful-choice-schools","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/?p=16687","title":{"rendered":"Taxpayers need more simplicity and transparency \u2014 not misleading arguments meant to stoke fears of successful choice schools"},"content":{"rendered":"

This post originally appeared at https:\/\/www.badgerinstitute.org\/taxpayers-need-more-simplicity-and-transparency-not-misleading-arguments-meant-to-stoke-fears-of-successful-choice-schools\/<\/a><\/p>\n

A paper from an insiders\u2019 group offers bad-faith arguments about Wisconsin school choice and the \u201cdecoupling\u201d reform that would increase transparency<\/strong><\/em><\/h4>\n

A reform that wonks are calling \u201cdecoupling\u201d \u2014 an excellent way to simplify school choice funding and eliminate choice\u2019s\u202fimpact on property taxpayers \u2014 is being opposed by the Wisconsin Association of School Business Officials<\/a> on the grounds it will, among other things, eliminate a source of \u201cnegative attention\u201d that choice critics have long used to\u00a0mount opposition.<\/p>\n

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\"Collage-style<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

Don\u2019t fix the problem, in other words, because then there won\u2019t be an unfixed problem to continue to complain about.<\/p>\n

The reform WASBO opposes is logical and straightforward<\/a>. All funding for Parental Choice Programs and independent charter schools would come from direct state aid, thereby \u201cdecoupling\u201d school funding from local funding formulas and preventing any impact on local property taxes.<\/p>\n

This is already how it works in Milwaukee, and school reformers are pushing for the same decoupling throughout the rest of the state.<\/p>\n

In a recent piece disingenuously entitled \u201cThe Price of Parallel Systems,\u201d the WASBO\u2019s research director, Anne Chapman, writes that one of the problems with decoupling is that it would \u201cmake the fiscal impact of voucher schools effectively imperceptible to the typical taxpayer.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt would make public schools the only K-12 schools imposing an explicit cost on local residents through property taxes,\u201d she writes.<\/p>\n

In sum, it would shield the choice program, Chapman writes, from \u201cthe negative attention it has come to generate from property taxpayers.\u201d<\/p>\n

That negative attention is generated by school choice opponents trying to blame districts\u2019 property tax rates on families sending their children to private and charter schools \u2014 choices that, in truth, save taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars per year.<\/p>\n

How choice schools actually save taxpayers money<\/h4>\n

Full transparency on all tax bills would include a lot more facts.<\/p>\n

Chapman writes that Wisconsin spends about $629 million educating 58,623 Parental Choice Program students. She doesn\u2019t do the math, but you can: That\u2019s $10,730 per student.<\/p>\n

Compare that to what taxpayers at every level made available<\/a> to traditional districts in 2022-23, still the most recent figures: $16,989 per pupil, on average. In Milwaukee, the figure was about $23,700 per pupil; in Madison, it was $19,500. Every school district in Wisconsin had more in total taxpayer funding per pupil than did private schools in the Parental Choice Programs.<\/p>\n

If those 58,623 students ended up back in traditional district schools over this past year, they would have cost about $1 billion a year to educate, or 58% more than taxpayers now provide.<\/p>\n

Chapman\u2019s paper is misleading, at best, in numerous other key regards:<\/p>\n

Savings for taxpayers: <\/strong>She, for example, raises the issue of special education but fails to mention that private schools in the Parental Choice Programs by law cannot discriminate<\/a> against students with specials needs that they can accommodate with \u201cminor adjustments,\u201d the same as is the case for any individual public school.<\/p>\n

The truth is that private schools in the Parental Choice Program accommodate more than 5,000 students<\/a> with special needs, many for no additional aid.<\/p>\n

Transfers from private schools: <\/strong>Chapman states that \u201cthe majority of voucher recipients statewide are in fact switching from private schooling at personal family expense to private schooling at public expense.\u201d She claims that \u201cabout two-thirds of voucher recipients in the first two years of the WCPC (the statewide school choice program) were already attending private schools\u201d and that this past year, \u201c95% of WPCP enrollment consists of students who did not attend a public school in the previous year.\u201d<\/p>\n

In other words, in the first years they had access to school choice, low- and moderate-income families who\u2019d been scraping by to afford tuition or relying on others\u2019 kindness instead turned to a voucher. This one-time event shouldn\u2019t be surprising.<\/p>\n

For later years, Chapman just misreads the data. When she says that 95 percent of choice students came from a private school, that\u2019s because the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction counts every child who returns for another year as having come from a private school, regardless of whether they previously switched from public school. See the actual figures here<\/a>: This past year, 80 percent of choice students simply returned for another year, their parents satisfied with the education delivered. Only 5 percent were new to choice because they switched from paying on their own.<\/p>\n

Student improvement: <\/strong>Chapman asserts that \u201ca growing body of research raises concerns\u201d that private schools parents choose \u201cdo not generally improve student achievement compared to traditional public schools.\u201d Two of her links are to lists assembled by the National Coalition for Public Education, a set of interest groups such as teachers\u2019 unions, many directly connected to traditional district schools. The coalition is organized around killing school choice. They offer news articles that aren\u2019t studies at all, studies that don\u2019t address academic performance, or some that cherry-pick particular years.<\/p>\n

While there\u2019s ample evidence that private schools in the Parental Choice Programs and independent charter schools produce better results, the greatest testimony is that of parents, who affirmatively choose to keep their kids in schools that work for them.<\/p>\n

Unfettered growth?<\/h4>\n

\u201cThe larger, long-term concern that policymakers will need to address,\u201d writes Chapman, is that disentangling school choice from districts\u2019 finances and levies could \u201chelp facilitate unfettered growth in spending on a parallel system of private K-12 schools that are not evenly distributed across the state.\u201d<\/p>\n

Chapman\u2019s saying that because schools in the Parental Choice Programs aren\u2019t evenly distributed, it isn\u2019t fair that taxpayers statewide should fund them. So, would people who live far from a University of Wisconsin campus be exempt from having to subsidize it as well? In reality, it\u2019s school choice that can spur growth in independent schools<\/a> across the state.<\/p>\n

But \u201cunfettered\u201d? That reveals what she and her association fear is that parents will continue to opt for choice schools. The association seems bothered that if children need educating and taxpayers want to help, any of those needs should be satisfied anywhere but in their district schools.<\/p>\n

Remember, the goal of the Parental Choice Programs is not to replace the public school system. The Supreme Court found choice constitutional because it exists alongside<\/em> the district school system \u2014 not as a duplicative \u201cparallel\u201d but as an alternative.<\/p>\n

At no point does Chapman\u2019s paper speculate about why parents are flocking to school choice \u2014 they are<\/a>, with choice enrollment up 290 percent in the past two decades, even as traditional districts\u2019 enrollment is down 9 percent, or 77,000 students.<\/p>\n

At no point does the paper ask why school choice is so popular with Wisconsinites \u2014 and<\/a> it is<\/a>, in<\/a> poll<\/a> after poll<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Wisconsin does not, in fact, have \u201cparallel systems.\u201d It has 420 school districts, which compete with each other via open enrollment<\/a>, and when a child moves from one district to another, public funding eventually follows. More importantly, only a portion of the total funding follows a child, which means most districts that lose more students than they gain through public school open enrollment end up levying property taxes for students they don\u2019t educate. The paper is silent on that levy impact.<\/p>\n

It makes a kind of sense that districts\u2019 business officials would focus on districts or on their whole school district industry as the thing that must be protected from what they see as a competitor.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

But for the rest of us, what Wisconsin has is not \u201cparallel systems\u201d but about 970,000 school-aged children. About 800,000 go to traditional district schools, others are homeschooled, some go to a parish school that parents pay for, some use parental choice, some go to independent public charter schools.<\/p>\n

For the parents of each one of them, what needs protecting isn\u2019t some \u201csystem\u201d but that child\u2019s future.<\/p>\n

Wisconsin\u2019s comparative openness to parental choice gives families the latitude they need to protect that interest. Further reforms, discussed in a way that centers on children rather than on systems or the adults running them, will help those families more.<\/p>\n

And decoupling, which helps both districts and taxpayers, is a good next step.<\/p>\n

Jim Bender is an Education Consultant to the Badger Institute and Patrick McIlheran its Director of Policy.<\/em><\/p>\n

Any\u202fuse or reproduction of Badger Institute articles or photographs requires prior written\u202fpermission.\u202fTo request permission to post articles on a website or print copies for distribution, contact Badger Institute Marketing Director Matt Erdman at\u202f<\/em>matt@badgerinstitute.org<\/em><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

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