Voucher Oucher: "School Choice" Doesn't Work, Conservative Think Tank Study Shows

A remarkable story from today's Milwaukee Journal Sentinel makes a devastating case against voucher advocates like Rex Sinquefield and Jane Cunningham.  From the piece:

A study being released today suggests that school choice isn't a
powerful tool for driving educational improvement in Milwaukee Public
Schools.

But more surprising than the conclusion is the organization issuing
the study: the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute, a conservative
think tank that has supported school choice for almost two decades,
when Milwaukee became the nation's premier center for trying the idea.
The institute is funded in large part by the Milwaukee-based Lynde and
Harry Bradley Foundation, an advocate of school choice.

The story goes on to explain about how Milwaukee --a place where the most longitudinal hard evidence about the effect of "school choice" programs exists-- has not seen the improvement in its schools that is regularly touted by advocates of "school choice" or voucher programs. 
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­­Don't look for this empirical, data driven conclusion about the ineffectiveness of school choice to stop the anti-public schools jihadists like Rex Sinquefield and Jane Cunningham from pursuing vouchers in Missouri, however.  They'll disregard the study even though it comes from a conservative, pro-voucher organization.

For people like Sinquefield and Cunningham who don't care whether public schools succeed or fail, the results of "school choice" programs are unimportant.  For them, vouchers are an end in themselves, fully apart from the qualitative effects that the programs will have on our schools and our children.

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