Milwaukee's Voucher Program: a Success Story

[TheMightyFavog]

:sarcasm:

http://www.jsonline.com/news/metro/dec05/375084.asp


Ex-staff describe unruly school
Educators, fired in pay rift, say discipline lax at Northside High

Students regularly smoked pot, skipped school and shot dice without fear of punishment, a group of former teachers and administrators at the troubled Northside High School alleges in interviews with the Journal Sentinel and a letter to state officials.

(snip)

"It's not a school," she added. "It's a holding place for students who I guess couldn't make it in MPS (Milwaukee Public Schools). It's like a detention center. . . . We even had a student who rolled a (marijuana) blunt in front of the teacher in the classroom."

(snip)

The state has already taken steps against Northside, notifying leaders there in November that it would not receive any more state payments because it does not meet the standards to be considered a private school.

Northside opened this fall through the voucher program, which allows private schools to receive public money from tuition vouchers for low-income students. Brooks, a former administrator at Academic Solutions, a voucher school closed down by the state last school year, is chief executive officer. Northside is at 4840 W. Fond du Lac Ave., the former site of Academic Solutions.

[Dinger]

1. Talking Heads On The "News" Are Always Touting Milwaukee Schiools As A

"SUCKsess" story. What a joke!

[sam sarrha]

2. if your are a student at public school it is really great to have those

people somewhere else.

i failed to get an education because of the gangs, constant disturbance in the class room and the violence where i went to school.

i studied on my own.. i went to the city library and studied math and science.. history etc. where it was safe

I hid out in the little lab behind the science class for an hour before and after school till all the Hoods were gone.. i joined the model air plane club cause they met in the wood shop at noon and worked on their planes.. behind a locked door.

i took Track for PE and got fast enough to out run them if they caught me on the street.. they nearly killed me a couple of times.

[MrBenchley]

3. Worth noting that

When the voucher program was audited back in 1995 by the University of Wisconsin it was a failure...so the Wisconsin legislature knocked out provisions of the law calling for future evaluations.

http://www.pfaw.org/pfaw/general/default.aspx?oid=1522

The program has been riddled with fraud...

http://www.weac.org/News/2004-05/dec04/voucher.htm

http://www.weac.org/News/2003-04/july04/seppeh.htm

"Meanwhile, Alex's Academics of Excellence received $2.8 million in voucher money over three years before the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported that the school's founder, James A. Mitchell, served nearly a decade in prison for a 1971 rape. Unlike their counterparts at public schools, principals and teachers at private schools do not have to undergo criminal background checks. "

http://reclaimdemocracy.org/articles_2004/milwaukee_voucher_thieves.html

Also worth noting that vouchers have been offered on referendums to voters in at least nine states and have been rejected in all of them by ever increasing margins.

[whoretaculture]

4. Can we retire

the old argument that the voucher schools will "skim the cream" of students and leave the public schools with only the scum?