Dive Brief:
- Wisconsin Assembly Speaker Robin Vos expressed concerns about Gov. Scott Walker's new plan for voucher schools, which would lift the 1,000-student enrollment cap and be paid for by funds from districts losing students to the expansion.
- Vos and other Republicans in the state's legislature are concerned that this plan will hurt the amount of funding participating voucher families receive.
- The speaker made clear that the first priority is making sure families already receiving voucher funds don't see a cut in their allotment.
Dive Insight:
Walker's proposal also calls for the removal of the Common Core State Standards and the replacement of the state's current school ranking structure (which gives summaries of how well schools are meeting goals) with a more traditional A-F system.
As mentioned above, Walker's plan for all of this does not involve any new funds. Rather, he planned on having traditional public schools that were losing students pay for the voucher programs. (Essentially, the model would have funding follow students from their public schools to the voucher school.) Additionally, he called for the removal of a school diversity integration plan, which would have freed up $60 million.
The idea of calling for school reform while also pushing aside a plan aimed at better racial integration seems backwards. The unfortunate reality is that many urban areas, like Milwaukee, are segregated by a number of factors like poverty, leading to less diversity in some school populations and also creating a greater need for resources. In fall 2014, the U.S. Department of Education issued a guidance in which it explained that schools serving predominantly students of color are more likely to have under-qualified and non-certified teachers, fewer course offerings (with AP classes and even staples like chemistry limited), and less tech access. School reform plans are typically aiming to better help minority and low-income students, but cutting an integration plan does exactly the opposite.