[Mb-civic] City Schools That Work By JOHN TIERNEY

[Michael Butler]

The New York Times
Printer Friendly Format Sponsored By

March 7, 2006
Op-Ed Columnist
City Schools That Work
By JOHN TIERNEY

MILWAUKEE

At first glance, the near north side of Milwaukee can be a bleak place, now
that it has lost the department stores, factories and other businesses that
used to thrive there. But if you want to see inner-city children getting a
good education, it's the most beautiful spot in America.

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel refers to one of the area's arteries, North
Avenue, as the Main Street of School Reform because of the new schools that
have opened since the city's radical experiment in education began 15 years
ago. At that time, there were two newspapers in Milwaukee, the liberal
Journal and the conservative Sentinel, and they both editorialized against
the new school-voucher program.

Now there's one combined newspaper with a different point of view. The
Journal Sentinel, which endorsed John Kerry in 2004, has parted company with
the Democratic Party on the voucher issue. It backed Republican efforts this
year to expand the program, which has led to the creation of dozens of new
private schools in Milwaukee.

"We've seen what school choice can do," said Gregory Stanford, an editorial
writer and a columnist at the paper. "It's impressive to go around to the
voucher schools and see kids learning. Their parents are much more satisfied
with these schools. And the fears that the public schools would be hurt have
turned out to be wrong."

In fact, the students in public schools have benefited from the competition.
Two studies by Harvard researchers, one by Caroline Hoxby and another by
Rajashri Chakrabarti, have shown that as the voucher program expanded in
Milwaukee, there was a marked improvement in test scores at the public
schools most threatened by the program (the ones with large numbers of
low-income students eligible for the vouchers).

The competition spurred the public system to shift power from the central
administration to individual schools, allowing councils of parents and
teachers to decide who should teach there, instead of forcing the schools to
accept incompetent teachers just because they had seniority.

"Poor teachers used to shuffle from one school on to another in what we
called the dance of the lemons," says Ken Johnson, the head of the school
board. "But we couldn't let that continue once our students had the option
to go somewhere else. We had to react to students' needs. We had to start
seeing them as customers, not just seat-fillers."

Some of the new voucher schools have flopped ‹ but the advantage of a
voucher program is that a bad private school can be shut down a lot faster
than a bad public school. And while critics complain that there still isn't
definitive evidence that voucher students are doing better over all in their
new schools, the results so far in Milwaukee and other cities are more than
enough to declare vouchers a success.

"All the good research, including the voucher opponents' work, shows that
kids who accept vouchers are doing at least as well as their public school
peers," says Joseph Viteritti of Hunter College. "That's remarkable,
considering how much less money is being spent on the voucher students."

In Milwaukee, where the public system spends more than $10,000 per student,
private schools get less than $6,400 for each voucher student. But when you
see what can be done for that money, you realize what's wrong with
Democrats' favorite solution for education: more money for the public-school
monopoly.

At the CEO Leadership Academy, a high school with 125 students in the new
wing of a Baptist church, you find students who compare the school to a
family. They rhapsodize about small classes, teachers who stay after school
to help them and the feeling that the school is a calm oasis from the
streets ‹ not what they got in their old public schools.

"When I first heard about this school, they told me the school day's longer
and you have to wear a uniform," said Elliott Barnes, a ninth grader. "I
didn't like that at all. But then I walked in here and noticed right away
how many people were smiling in the hall. In my public school, when a
stranger smiled at you there, you started worrying."

The school principal, Denise Pitchford, worked in the public schools, but
she took a pay cut in exchange for less red tape. "I wanted the flexibility
to give immediate personal attention to every student," she said. "To me, it
represented less money but a better opportunity." Just like the whole
voucher program.

    * Copyright 2006The New York Times Company
    * Home
    * Privacy Policy
    * Search
    * Corrections
    * XML
    * Help
    * Contact Us
    * Work for Us
    * Site Map
    * Back to Top