Stunning Milwaukee failure

Last Friday I posted some information about the very few existing voucher experiments around the country, in order to get some perspective about the proposed Utah voucher law.

So today when I scanned through the various blogs keeping track of the voucher "discussion", I spotted Accountability First's entry today about the latest research on the Milwaukee voucher experiment.

WOW. To have Howard Fuller, one of the leaders of the voucher movement, and the conservative Wisconsin Research Policy Institute say that vouchers haven't worked for Milwaukee students is an absolutely stunning admission of failure.

Competition didn't improve student performance, or the public schools. Lack of oversight led to fraud and abuse (and fly-by-night schools). AND, Milwaukee taxpayers have been forced to foot the bill with ever increasing property taxes to pay for the voucher program.

It's all there for us to learn from. The dismal failure of vouchers in Milwaukee is reason enough to reject them in Utah.

Here's the full story from the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel. I encourage anyone still undecided how to vote on Referendum 1 to read this.

And I sincerely hope that Paul Rolly, or Glen Warchol at the Trib or Tiffany Erickson at the News will put some hard questions before the parade of out-of-staters that the Sutherland Institute is bringing in to try to bolster the failing voucher effort.

And I hope all the business leaders who are trying to intimidate their employees into voting for vouchers will really check the record on tax increases in Milwaukee. School vouchers caused taxes to go up. As the Journal-Sentinel reported here:

"In a letter last week to state Rep. Sheldon Wasserman (D-Milwaukee), Milwaukee School Board President Joe Dannecker said that $7.6 million of the $16.5 million increase in the amount of property tax to be collected for schools for this school year is due to the voucher program and that each voucher student increased property tax collections by $447, while each MPS student increased collections by $91. The total property tax bill being levied by MPS increased this fall by 7.7%."

Vouchers are a dismal failure.

Still on the voucher money trail

Finding out how much money is being spent on this voucher campaign won't come until the end of the month when reports are due. Once again, Parents for Choice in Education (PCE) likely will complain about the money that Utah teachers, and teachers around the country, are putting into the opposition to Referendum 1.

And I will bet anyone in Utah $1 that the PCE finance report again shows that the majority of its expendable funds were donated by the "PCE Foundation" and "PCE, Inc." Both those entities clearly were created to obfuscate the REAL donors to the pro-voucher side. Neither foundations nor corporations making political expenditures are required by Utah law to reveal their donors.

It could well be that the All Children Matter operation out of Michigan is still funding PCE. Likely, even. But, since the ACM operation in Michigan is a corporation too, it can donate to its heart's content to the "PCE Foundation" and "PCE, Inc." and never leave a trace.

Or, it could be that ACM has its hands full right now. It got a little too clever when operating in Wisconsin in 2006 where the organization was found guilty of violating campaign finance laws. (You can read about it here if interested.)

Now, ACM's mother operation faces similar election law violations in Ohio where the Secretary of State is challenging ACM's convulted money laundering operation. (And, if you're interested in Ohio, you can read about ACM's troubles here.)

But then we just don't know if ACM's multi-millionaire donors are funding the pro-voucher effort in Utah. We do know at least one Utahn, Patrick Byrne, is investing some of his considerable fortune into PCE and its operations.

Mr. Byrne will be worth looking at and I relish the opportunity. Stay tuned!

P.S. If the Friedman Foundation also is expending money to persuade reluctant Utahns to support vouchers, does it have to register as a PIC? Glen Warchol noted this in today's Salt Lake City Tribune:

"The voucher discussion began with a slick promotional film, paid for by the Milton Friedman Foundation, that presented the voucher program as necessary to prepare Utah for an expected onslaught of 155,000 new students over the next five years."