Because of the popularity of vouchers, however, the program has grown each year of its existence. During this school year, approximately 8,500 students, most of them minorities, are using vouchers to attend more than 95 schools. Choice improves student performance. After four years in the program, students attending private schools score significantly better than their public school counterparts in reading and math. Were these scores to be replicated nationwide, they would cut the achievement gap between white students and African-American students by as much as half.
Competition leads to public school reform.
The fear that vouchers would harm public schools by draining away the brightest students, leaving many public schools as warehouses for the most-difficult to educate, has proven false in Milwaukee. Under the program, voucher students take only their share of state education funds with them to private schools. Without vouchers, moreover, thousands of additional students would enroll in the public schools, leading to increased class sizes and a need for more capital expenditures. Most importantly, however, the public school system has begun to undertake significant reform in response to the competitive pressure applied by the choice program. MPS now guarantees that public school students will read at grade level by the end of second grade, or else MPS will pay for individualized, private tutoring.