Ed Week on Distorted Special Ed Counts

March 15, 2012

(Guest post by Greg Forster)

Ed Week dives into details on the difficult issue of how special education counts get distorted by a variety of factors. The article gets into a lot of interesting issues that make it difficult to get a clear picture of how many disabled students are served by the program. See also here for the researchers’ take on the issue.

One factor not canvassed in the Ed Week story – unsurprisingly – is the role of financial incentives in public school special education programs. Public schools are incentivized to label studnets as disabled in order to access additional funding. Study after study after study after study has confirmed the empirical relationship between the presence and strength of these incentives and rising rates of special education diagnosis in public schools. Private schools have no such distorting incentive and will thus report lower numbers of disabled students. (All this is true regardless of whether you think the true rate of disabilities is higher, as in the public system, or somewhat lower, as in the private system.)

2 Comments | special ed, vouchers | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by Greg Forster

More on Milwaukee School Choice Research Results

March 5, 2012

I wrote last week about the release of the final research results from Milwaukee’s school choice program.  On Sunday the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel devoted its entire editorial page to a discussion of those results.  Check out the succinct summary of the findings by Patrick Wolf and John Witte.

Also be sure to check out the response from the head of the teachers union, Bob Peterson.  His rebuttal consists of noting that many students switch sectors, moving from choice to traditional public schools as well as in the opposite direction.  He thinks that this undermines the validity of Wolf and Witte’s graduation rate analysis, but he fails to understand that the researchers used an intention to treat approach that attributes outcomes to students’ original selection of sector regardless of their switching.  And on the special education claim he simply reiterates the Department of Public Instruction’s (DPI) faulty effort to equate the percentage of students who are entitled to accommodations on the state test with the percentage of students who have disabilities.

For more on how DPI under-stated the rate of disabilities in the Milwaukee choice program by between 400% and 900%, check out the new article Wolf, Fleming, and Witte just published in Education Next.  It’s not only an excellent piece of research detective work on how DPI arrived at such an erroneous claim, but it is also a useful warning to anyone who thinks that government issued claims provide the authoritative answer on research questions.  Government agencies, like DPI, can lie and distort as much or more than any special interest group.  They just do it with your tax dollars and in your name.

3 Comments | vouchers | Tagged: , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Jay P. Greene

New Milwaukee Choice Results

February 27, 2012

My colleague at the University of Arkansas, Patrick Wolf, along with John Witte at the University of Wisconsin and a team of researchers have released their final round of reports on the Milwaukee school choice program.  You can read the press release here and find the full set of reports here.

They find that access to a private school with a voucher in Milwaukee significantly increases the probability that students will graduate from high school:

“Our clearest positive finding is that the Choice Program boosts the rates at which students graduate from high school, enroll in a four-year college, and persist in college,” said John Witte, professor of political science and public affairs at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. ”Since educational attainment is linked to positive life outcomes such as higher lifetime earnings and lower rates of incarceration, this is a very encouraging result of the program.”

They also find that “when similar students in the voucher program and in Milwaukee Public Schools were compared, the achievement growth of students in the voucher program was higher in reading but similar in math.”  Unfortunately, the testing conditions changed during the study because the private school testing went from being low stakes to high stakes, making it difficult to draw strong conclusions about the effects of the program on test scores.

In addition, it should be remembered that the design of the Milwaukee study is a matched comparison, which is less rigorous than random-assignment.  The more convincing random-assignment analyses are significant and positive in 9 of the 10 that have been conducted, with the tenth having null effects.  You can find a summary and links to all of them here.

Perhaps the most interesting part of the new Milwaukee results is the report on special education rates in the choice program.  As it turns out, Wisconsin’s Department of Public Instruction grossly under-stated the percentage of students in the choice program who have disabilities.  Some reporters and policymakers act as if the Department of Public Instruction’s reports are reliable and insightful because they are a government agency, while the reports of university professors are distorted and misleading.  Read this report on special education rates and I think you’ll learn a lot about how politically biased government agencies like the Department of Public Instruction can be.

6 Comments | vouchers | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by Jay P. Greene

MPS Takes “Standing in the Schoolhouse Door” to a Whole New Level

May 31, 2011

(Guest post by Greg Forster)

Over the weekend, John Witte and Pat Wolf had a compelling article in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel summarizing the real (as opposed to media-reported) results of the Milwaukee voucher program research being conducted by the School Choice Demonstration Project.

And then they dropped a bomb:

Recently, our research team conducted site visits to high schools in Milwaukee to examine any innovative things they are doing to educate disadvantaged children. The private high schools of the choice program graciously opened their doors to us and allowed us full access to their schools. Although several MPS principals urged us to come see their schools as well, the central administration at MPS prohibited us having any further contact with those schools as they considered our request for visits. We have not heard from them in weeks.

Our report on the private schools we visited, which will offer a series of best practices regarding student dropout prevention, will be released this fall. Should MPS choose to open the doors of their high schools to us, we will be able to learn from their approaches as well. [ea]

MPS opposition to vouchers takes standing in the schoolhouse door to a whole new level.

Leave a Comment » | journalism, research reports, vouchers | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Greg Forster

Verdict in the WSJ: “School Vouchers Work”

May 3, 2011

Wall Street Journal columnist, Jason Riley has a must-read piece in the WSJ today.  The piece features the work of my University of Arkansas colleague, Patrick Wolf, JPGB’s very own Greg Forster, as well as a reference to the competitive effects study that Ryan Marsh and I conducted in Milwaukee.  There are too many highlights, but here is a (big) taste:

‘Private school vouchers are not an effective way to improve student achievement,” said the White House in a statement on March 29. “The Administration strongly opposes expanding the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program and opening it to new students.” But less than three weeks later, President Obama signed a budget deal with Republicans that includes a renewal and expansion of the popular D.C. program, which finances tuition vouchers for low-income kids to attend private schools.

School reformers cheered the administration’s about-face though fully aware that it was motivated by political expediency rather than any acknowledgment that vouchers work.

When Mr. Obama first moved to phase out the D.C. voucher program in 2009, his Education Department was in possession of a federal study showing that voucher recipients, who number more than 3,300, made gains in reading scores and didn’t decline in math. The administration claims that the reading gains were not large enough to be significant. Yet even smaller positive effects were championed by the administration as justification for expanding Head Start….

The positive effects of the D.C. voucher program are not unique. A recent study of Milwaukee’s older and larger voucher program found that 94% of students who stayed in the program throughout high school graduated, versus just 75% of students in Milwaukee’s traditional public schools. And contrary to the claim that vouchers hurt public schools, the report found that students at Milwaukee public schools “are performing at somewhat higher levels as a result of competitive pressure from the school voucher program.” Thus can vouchers benefit even the children that don’t receive them.

Research gathered by Greg Forster of the Foundation for Educational Choice also calls into question the White House assertion that vouchers are ineffective. In a paper released in March, he says that “every empirical study ever conducted in Milwaukee, Florida, Ohio, Texas, Maine and Vermont finds that voucher programs in those places improved public schools.” Mr. Forster surveyed 10 empirical studies that use “random assignment, the gold standard of social science,” to assure that the groups being compared are as similar as possible. “Nine [of the 10] studies find that vouchers improve student outcomes, six that all students benefit and three that some benefit and some are not affected,” he writes. “One study finds no visible impact. None of these studies finds a negative impact.”

Such results might influence the thinking of an objective observer primarily interested in doing right by the nation’s poor children. But they are unlikely to sway a politician focused on getting re-elected with the help of teachers unions.

“I think Obama and Duncan really care about school reform,” says Terry Moe, who teaches at Stanford and is the author of a timely new book, “Special Interest: Teachers Unions and America’s Public Schools.” “On the other hand they have to be sensitive to their Democratic coalition, which includes teachers unions. And one way they do that is by opposing school vouchers.”

The reality is that Mr. Obama’s opposition to school vouchers has to do with Democratic politics, not the available evidence on whether they improve outcomes for disadvantaged kids. They do—and he knows it.

5 Comments | vouchers | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Jay P. Greene

Vouchers and the Rising Tide

April 7, 2010

“A rising tide lifts all boats.”

(Guest post by Greg Forster)

I haven’t had a chance to read the details yet, but from the executive summary of the new results released today by the School Choice Demonstration Project, it looks like vouchers have done a good job of improving education for all students in the city of Milwaukee.

What? That’s not the way you heard it?

Of course not. Because the new result, taken in isolation from other information, simply says that after two years, the voucher students are making learning improvements about the same as public school students. The scores for the voucher students are higher, but the difference is not statistically certain.

However, let’s plug that into the larger universe of information. We know – from the very same research project – that vouchers are improving education in Milwaukee public schools. The positive incentives of competition and the improved matching of student needs to school strengths are causing public schools to deliver a better education.

So if the voucher students and the public school students are doing about the same, and vouchers are improving results for public school students, it follows that vouchers are improving results for everybody.

That, of course, is the consistent finding of a large body of research. The overwhelming research consensus is that vouchers improve public schools.

Also, let’s not forget that in several previous longitudinal studies, the results from the first one or two years were similar – the voucher students ahead, but the difference not statistically certain – and in those cases, in later years the difference always became statistically certain. It just took the accumulation of more data to reach the high bar of statistical certainty.

So here’s a toast to the great news that vouchers in Milwaukee are making everybody better off!

3 Comments | research reports, vouchers | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by Greg Forster

Milwaukee Voucher Students Have Higher Grad Rate

February 2, 2010

In a new analysis released today by School Choice Wisconsin, University of Minnesota sociologist Rob Warren finds that voucher students in Milwaukee graduate high school at a higher rate than students in Milwaukee Public Schools.

According to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel’s coverage this morning:

For 2007-’08, Warren estimated the graduation rate in voucher schools to be 77%, and the graduation rate in MPS to be 65%, a difference of 12 percentage points. The information includes comparisons between seven choice schools and 23 public high schools that could provide complete data for all six years studied, and adjusted to account for an expected 5% ninth-grade retention rate in choice schools and an expected 25% ninth-grade retention rate in MPS.

And from the report’s summary we get an idea of how big that difference in graduation rate is:

As Professor Warren illustrates here, had MPS attained the same graduation rate achieved in the MPCP, an additional 3,352 students would have received diplomas between 2003 and 2008. According to the research cited in the Journal Sentinel, the annual impact from an additional 3,352 MPS graduates would include an additional $21.2 million in personal income and about $3.6 million in extra tax revenue.

Warren is careful to note that his analysis does not determine whether vouchers caused the higher graduation rate or attracted students who were more likely to graduate, but he is pretty confident that the voucher students do graduate at higher rates.  the public school officials are not so convinced: “You have to take into account things like mortality, and the number of students who move to another school,” St. Aubin said.

Mortality?  Is that a plausible explanation for the difference?  Warren’s method is similar to earlier work that Greg, Marcus, and I have done in estimating graduation rates and while not absolutely precise is likely to be reasonably accurate.  A forthcoming analysis by the School Choice Demonstration Project led by my colleague at the University of Arkansas, Pat Wolf, and with which I am involved will be able to examine this issue tracking individual students over time.

3 Comments | vouchers | Tagged: , , | Permalink
Posted by Jay P. Greene

Buildingpalooza

February 11, 2009

fancy-church  shack

An underfunded regular public school; a money-draining charter school

(Guest post by Greg Forster)

I can see that school buildings are going to be a big topic for us for the foreseeable future. There’s the feds’ desperate need to blow money on something, anything, in the “recovery” bill (they’re no longer even bothering to call it a “stimulus” bill, apparently). And Jay’s post on school construction last week generated some interesting conversation in the comment thread.

Then last week opponents of the bill had a lot of fun spotlighting its provision of $89 million for school construction in Milwaukee, despite the fact that Milwaukee has had major enrollment declines leading to lots of empty and “underused” buildings, its buildings are deemed to be in good condition, the city has no plans for any construction projects, and just last year it had a major scandal centering around the waste of tens of millions of dollars in construction funding.

But here’s something I don’t think anyone outside Milwaukee has highlighted yet. In the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel’s story on the funding, somebody at the paper (presumably a bemused editor) inserted the following subtitle above a section of the story:

What is “Construction”?

Somebody get Socrates on the line, because it’s a good question. As a commenter pointed out on Jay’s post last week, once money goes into the system, we can’t be sure what it really gets spent on. We know how much money was budgeted for “construction,” but typically there’s nobody checking to see what was actually bought with those “construction” funds.

Sure enough, the Journal Sentinel quotes a state Democratic spokesperson saying that all of that yummy yummy swag for “school construction” could legitimately be spent on “school modernization.”

Next month’s headline: “What is ‘School Modernization’?”

Do these sound like conditions under which the money will be spent wisely? And don’t kid yourself that Milwaukee is somehow a special exception, and the stimulus money is going to be well spent elsewhere.

Suppose you don’t believe the vast mountain of empirical research that Jay cited last week. Let’s just drop all that science into the toilet bowl and flush. Even so, can anyone believe that money will be well used when it’s handed over to a system that has no real transparency, much less effective oversight, never mind accountability for results – and that is run by people who also just happen to derive political power by diverting school funding into an enormous gravy train of featherbedding, pork, etc.?

If we’re dumb enough to hand over the money under those circumstances, why would they not divert it to the gravy train? I’m amazed the schools in the government monopoly system aren’t even worse than they are.

But wait. There’s yet another school building story on the horizon. This one broke out in the edreformblogosphere just yesterday.

stlouisarch

They built it with surplus “school construction” money

Like Milwaukee and pretty much every other city, St. Louis has long-term declining enrollment, but that didn’t stop it from pouring tons of money into school construction over the past few decades. Now St. Louis has a bunch of empty school buildings it needs to unload, so it’s going to sell them off.

But not everyone is allowed to bid on the empty school buildings. Joanne Jacobs puts it succinctly: “The school board has banned sales of buildings to liquor stores, landfills, distilleries, sex shops and charter schools.”

Read that again: Liquor stores, landfills, distilleries, sex shops and charter schools.

Not much more to say, is there? Charters are the one sector of the government-owned education system that is 1) growing fast, 2) willing to take on the most disadvantaged, toughest-to-teach kids, and 3) producing improved results, and they do it with less money – especially less construction money! - than the regular system. But they aren’t allowed to buy – not take for free, but buy, as in purchase at market value, by paying actual money - the city’s empty buildings.

drive-thru-liquorlandfill

distilleryPT006149

Some typical St. Louis charter schools

I’m with Matt – if the system’s defenders don’t realize they’re destroying millions of children’s lives in order to funnel money to a corrupt gravy train, it’s only because they don’t want to know.

10 Comments | charter schools, money myth, school funding | Tagged: , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Greg Forster

Update on Fiscal Impact of Milwaukee Vouchers

December 15, 2008

(Guest Post by Robert Costrell)

Does the funding formula for the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program (MPCP) adversely affect Milwaukee taxpayers, even as it benefits taxpayers statewide?  The answer I gave in my recent Education Next article is yes, based on data through the 2007-08 school year.  Since publication, some confusion has arisen as to whether this result still holds for the current school year, as reported in the news and opinion columns of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel (“Fairness is in the Eye of the Beholder,” by Alan J. Borsuk and “Taxpayers, Parents on the Same Side,” by Patrick McIlheran) as well as an early version of Greg Forster’s post, since corrected here.

So let me update my Ed Next figures to the 2008-09 school year (hereafter FY09, for fiscal year).  The answer, in short, is still yes:  the adverse impact of the MPCP formulas on Milwaukee taxpayers continues unabated, even as the statewide benefits grow.  This is true, despite some modest efforts over the last two years by the Wisconsin legislature to address the problem.

First, let’s consider the size of the pie — the net savings available from the voucher program.  These savings derive from the fact that voucher expenses are $6,607 per child, while state and local revenues for MPS are set by the revenue limit at $9,462 per child.   These public savings are partially offset by the voucher expenditures on students who would have attended private schools anyway.  My best estimate is that these students comprise 10 percent of MPCP’s 19,500 students (see my full report for an explanation of this estimate, as well as my evaluation of different estimates).  Under this assumption, the net savings available to taxpayers totaled $37.2 million in FY09, up from $31.9 million in FY08 (the figure given in my Ed Next article).

The problem lies in the distribution of these benefits.  The savings accrue entirely to property taxpayers outside of Milwaukee and to Wisconsin state taxpayers:  Milwaukee property taxpayers do not share in these savings. 

The fiscal impact of MPCP on Milwaukee property taxes is driven by the fact that 45% of voucher expenditures are deducted from MPS aid, even though MPS receives no aid for these students.   As I explain in Ed Next, it certainly made sense to remove MPCP students from MPS enrollment counts when the system was reformed in 2000, but it made no sense to continue to deduct any of the voucher expenses from their remaining aid.  Milwaukee is allowed to raise its property taxes to recoup this deduction (the “choice levy”), and has to do so if it wants to maintain MPS’ per pupil revenues at the level specified by the revenue limit formula.   That is the essence of the “funding flaw.”

This is partially offset by 2 things.  First is that the removal of MPCP students from MPS enrollment counts saves the state aid money and some of that is passed on in statewide property tax relief; Milwaukee receives a small share of this.  The other offset, which began last year, is “high poverty aid,” an ad hoc appropriation to alleviate a portion of Milwaukee’s choice levy.

For FY09, these 3 pieces are $58.0 million (45% of voucher expenditures) minus $3.4 million (my estimate of Milwaukee’s share of statewide property tax relief) minus $9.9 million (“high poverty aid”) equals $44.7 million.  This is the adverse impact on Milwaukee property taxpayers of the voucher funding mechanism. 

It is worth emphasizing that this impact is on property taxpayers, not Milwaukee Public Schools.  Per pupil revenues available to MPS are unaffected by the voucher program, so long as Milwaukee fully utilizes the tax capacity granted to it under the MPCP formulas.   Milwaukee did utilize its tax capacity in FY09 (as it has done in all other recent years, with one exception noted below).

The picture is different for the rest of the state.  For FY09, I estimate the net benefit to property taxpayers outside of Milwaukee at $52.0 million, and the net benefit to state taxpayers at $30.0 million.   (The assumptions underlying these calculations and the basis for them are laid out in my Ed Next piece and my longer report for the School Choice Demonstration Project, along with details of the calculations.)

Taken all together, the net benefit to Wisconsin and Milwaukee taxpayers from the voucher program is $52.0 million (benefit to property taxpayers outside Milwaukee) plus $30.0 million (benefit to state taxpayers) minus $44.7 million (adverse effect on Milwaukee taxpayers) equals $37.2 million.   This is the net savings figure given above.

The pattern of winners and losers is depicted below, in the update of my Ed Next Figure 4.  The loss to Milwaukee property taxpayers is depicted by the blue bars in negative territory; the gains to other property taxpayers and state taxpayers are depicted by the maroon and tan bars in positive territory.

What was the impact of the “high poverty aid” program, enacted last year to alleviate the “funding flaw?”  As the diagram indicates, because of this additional aid, the adverse impact on Milwaukee property taxpayers for FY09 is no worse than in FY07, which is to say it did not grow as it would have without the aid. 

In addition, last year Milwaukee chose, for the first and only time in recent years, not to tax all the way up to the limit allowed by law.  There was $15.1 million of unused tax capacity.   Consequently, the diagram’s blue bar depicting the adverse impact on Milwaukee property taxpayers is shorter than it would otherwise have been for FY08.   This means that MPS received less than the per pupil revenue limit.   The figure attained was $8,978 instead of the revenue limit of $9,141.  The per pupil revenue still exceeded the FY07 figure, but did not increase as much as state law allowed.  In other words, this $15.1 million represents the shortfall for MPS, relative to the per pupil revenue limit.  This is depicted in the figure by the green bar for FY08, in negative territory. 

This year, Milwaukee has resumed its past practice of taxing up to the revenue limit, so the green bar disappears and the blue bar is no longer truncated:  there is no adverse impact on MPS, as the property taxpayers of Milwaukee make good on the full amount of the choice levy.

To summarize: 

(1)  Net savings from the Milwaukee voucher program continues to grow along with MPCP enrollments, and the widening gap between the voucher and the MPS revenue limit.   I estimate the net fiscal benefit at $37.2 million for FY09, up from $31.9 million for FY08.

(2) Milwaukee property taxpayers do not share in these benefits.  I estimate the adverse impact for FY09 to be $44.7 million.   The “high poverty aid” enacted in FY08 has kept the adverse impact from growing beyond its FY07 level, but has not materially reduced it either. 

The “funding flaw” persists.  As I stated in the conclusion of my Ed Next piece, “It remains to be seen whether, as the program grows, this flaw will undermine it or instead lead legislators to complete the reforms … so the benefits can be shared by all.

bob-3

 (Note 1:  the bars depicted for FY08 are revised from those published in Ed Next.  There I assumed Milwaukee taxed up to the revenue limit, as it had for preceding years.   This one-year departure from past practice came to my attention when the article was in press, too late to amend Figure 4.)

(Note 2: Alan Borsuk’s article, “Fairness is in the Eye of the Beholder,” includes a short summary of my Ed Next article, which states that I conclude “MPS is losing money […] on a per-pupil basis.”  My article actually states, “To avoid this result [MPS revenue loss on a per-pupil basis], MPS is still allowed to offset the [voucher] deduction by raising property taxes and it has chosen to do so.”  As the diagram above shows, the loss is for Milwaukee property taxpayers, not MPS, except for FY08, when Milwaukee chose not to offset the entire choice levy.)

Leave a Comment » | school funding, vouchers | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by Jay P. Greene

MJS: Failure to Steal Money Is a “Funding Flaw”

December 11, 2008

pickpocket

“I beg of you, Monsieur, watch yourself. Be on guard. This place is full of vultures . . . vultures everywhere. Everywhere.”

HT mcgady.net

(Guest post by Greg Forster)

Update: Robert Costrell says he thinks the claim that vouchers are now saving money for local taxpayers is incorrect. Apparently it comes down to a question of whether a certain item in the funding formula varies by enrollment or not. Costrell knows this stuff better than anyone, so I’m happy to defer to him.

At the time I wrote this post, I only had the MJS story to go on, and even the school choice opponents quoted in the article (Mayor Barrett and Superintendent Andrekopoulos) weren’t disputing the savings claim. So I wrote the post as though the savings claim had been implicitly accepted by voucher opponents because it had, in fact, been implicitly accepted by them. But I shouldn’t have actually reported the claim as true just because voucher opponents were implicitly accepting it as true, and I apologize for my carelessness.

That said, the MJS story is still amazingly irresponsible and I don’t regret a word of what I said about its complicity in Barrett and Andrekopoulos’s attmept to fleece Wisconsin taxpayers. I only hope that my own carelessness doesn’t help get MJS off the hook for printing this stuff.

(This update has been edited to more clearly differentiate Costrell’s thoughts from my own.)

For years, the Milwaukee voucher program had what the locals call “the funding flaw,” under which some local Milwaukee property tax revenues were diverted for every student who used the voucher. When the program was first enacted in 1990, there was no “funding flaw,” and it saved money for both the state and local Milwaukee taxpayers, just like most voucher programs. But in 1999 the rules were changed, and the program began diverting property taxes; the state profited handsomly at the expense of the city, using the voucher program as an intermediary. As a result, from 1999 until 2007, the program was a drain on local resources. The school choice movement in Milwaukee never supported this practice and worked to help stop it, but of course state politicians were never interested in helping, and the voucher program was always blamed for the local tax drain.

But now things have changed. This year, the program is once again saving local money – the amount the city loses from the program is now down below what it saves in reduced educational costs because it doesn’t have to teach the students in the program. So there is no more “funding flaw.”

Not so fast! Over the weekend, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel ran a very strange story claiming, not as opinion but as fact, that the “funding flaw” was never just about property taxes. Another, much more serious “funding flaw” has been lurking unnoticed in the bushes for all these years – namely, that the program fails to steal money from state taxpayers and transfer it to Milwaukee public schools.

I’m not sure anyone had ever heard about this “other” funding flaw before now. Call it the super double secret funding flaw.

1) The article begins by citing an argument between voucher proponents and opponents over whether the “funding flaw” still exists. It evenhandedly reports the claims on both sides: on the one hand, the school choice movement has facts and figures showing that voucher kids are now a net gain, not a net drain, for Milwaukee taxpayers. On the other hand, property taxes are going up and the people who run the public school system “associate a lot of that increase” with the voucher program. Facts and figures on one side versus mere assertion on the other – well, obviously there are two equally valid points of view about this controversial question! Who says the media aren’t evenhanded?

 

2) The article then lays out the facts: the “funding flaw” was always that a voucher student cost Milwaukee more than a public school student in property taxes. Now that’s not true anymore. The school choice folks are pointing out this inconvenient truth and saying, reasonably enough, that there’s no more funding flaw.

Then we get this: 

[Milwaukee Mayor Tom] Barrett and MPS Superintendent William Andrekopoulos dismiss that notion, saying the amount of property tax dollars per student illustrated only one part of the flaw. It was the main thing they pointed to because, frankly, it was easier to understand than other aspects. But, they say, the other aspects are actually a bigger deal.

So all these years they’ve been making a big deal over less important issues while concealing the real problem, but now, at last, they’re prepared to come clean and talk about the real problem.

Did you catch the casual insertion of the word “frankly” in the second sentence? This is the MJS reporter speaking in his own voice rather than quoting – but he’s such a puppet of the system’s defenders that their “frankly” comes out of his mouth. When Barrett stubs his toe, do MJS reporters say “ouch”?

 

 3) Then comes the really amazing part. MJS reports, as fact and not opinion, that the funding flaw always consisted of two problems. The first was the property tax issue, which now favors vouchers rather than public school kids – although when the story gets into the details of this, it never directly admits this as fact; it is reported as a claim being made by school choice proponents, and only sophisticated readers will be able to figure out from the reporter’s convoluted words that what the school choice proponents are saying is, in fact, indisputably true.

The alleged other part of the funding flaw, the super double secret one, is that voucher students are not counted as students being educated in Milwaukee public schools for purposes of setting the funding levels for Milwaukee public schools.

 

Got that? MJS reports as fact, not opinion, that the voucher program is flawed because it fails to force the state to pay Milwaukee public schools to teach kids that Milwaukee public schools do not, in fact, actually teach.

 

But of course the story doesn’t say this as clearly as I’ve just put it, or it would be obvious that this is sophistry in the service of a naked political agenda. A reader who didn’t already know the ins and outs of school finance would never realize from the article that the supposed other “flaw” is that the program doesn’t pay Milwaukee schools to teach students whom they don’t teach.

 

4) The article then goes on to note that fixing the super double secret funding “flaw” would be deeply unpopular because it would take money away from other areas of the state. The unstated implication is that it would be much more sensible to scrap the unworkable voucher program altogether.

Well, no kidding it would be unpopular for MPS to try to use the voucher program as an excuse to take money from state taxpayers to teach students that MPS doesn’t teach. Taking money to do something that you don’t do is called stealing.

What’s really galling is that this attempt to steal from state taxpayers is framed (by MJS as well as by Barrett and Andrekopoulos) as an attempt to “fix” an alleged funding “flaw” – the implication being that money is somehow being unfairly withheld from MPS. So the guy warning you about thieves is in fact the thief. I think that may actually be Andrekopoulos’s picture at the top of this post.

 

5) The article then parades Robert Costrell’s big cost analysis showing that vouchers cost more than they save for local taxpayers. At the very end of the paragraph, it quickly notes that this analysis “does not include figures from this fall.” In other words, the conclusion that the voucher program costs Milwaukee money is out of date because the facts on the ground have changed, and it has no relevance to the story (except by confusing readers who aren’t paying close attention).

 

6) Finally, at the end, the school choice movement is allowed to come back onstage and point out that Milwaukee public school spending and state aid to Milwaukee have both been growing relentlessly for years. Then we get this:

 

Andrekopoulos said in an interview that the main point is that something has to be changed, and the state funding system, including how vouchers are paid for, is the place to turn.

He said that Milwaukee residents are facing a 14.6% tax levy increase this year, even though the actual MPS budget went up less than 2%.

“Doesn’t that seem wrong?” Andrekopoulos said. “Something’s not right.”

This, like the previous claims about the super double secret “other funding flaw,” is sophistry pure and simple. Property taxes pay for much more than just schools, and the MPS budget gets a lot of revenue from sources other than property taxes. So these figures are apples and oranges; you can’t compare the two.

 

It would be like the UAW arguing that Rick Wagoner’s salary costs GM more than the UAW jobs bank, because budget category A (which includes spending on Wagoner’s salary, engine parts, steel bolts, and the company health plan) costs more than budget category B (which includes spending on the jobs bank, tires, car doors, and lunches in GM company cafeterias).

 

Until you break down the categories and look at what the individual components cost, you’re just blowing smoke. And when you break down the categories, vouchers save Milwaukee money – which is exactly what the MJS article established all the way back at the beginning.

I’ve seen a lot of irresponsible journalism, but this article just leaves me dumbfounded.

(UPDATE: Bob Costrell’s new analysis is here)

2 Comments | journalism, school funding, vouchers | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Greg Forster

Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 959 other followers