Over the past few decades, Milwaukee has developed a national reputation as a petri dish for education policies and reforms. From the introduction of school choice in 1990 to the more recent expansion of charter schools, from the turnaround model to school restructuring, there have been few reform ideas that have passed by Milwaukee. Now, after decades of experimentation, do we have a clear sense of what the current K-12 education landscape looks like in Milwaukee?
The Forum addressed this question in a pair of reports released in early December. In doing so, it used a unique analytical approach. Instead of analyzing the public, charter, and private schools sectors individually, the reports combine data to paint a more complete picture of K-12 education in the City of Milwaukee.
"For far too long, the debate on K-12 education in Milwaukee has centered on the virtues of public versus private or charter schools, and the intense nature of that debate has fostered the notion that supporting educational improvement in one sector must come at the expense of the others," says Forum Senior Researcher Joe Yeado. "But when viewed collectively, we see an increasing similarity of students across all school sectors, which instead suggests that more cooperation and coordination is needed among all Milwaukee schools."
The first report - What is the Milwaukee K-12 School System? - provides a comprehensive overview of the educational options as a guide for parents as well as policymakers. The report shows overall characteristics in terms of schools, students, teachers, types of schools, demographics, and academic achievement (where data is available). The second report, The K-12 School System in Milwaukee, takes a deeper look at the education landscape to show how it has changed in the past decade and how Milwaukee compares to 10 peer cities.
"Analyses in the companion reports indicate that the sectors are far more similar than they are different," says Yeado. "For example, as enrollment has shifted away from the Milwaukee Public Schools and towards charter and private schools participating in the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program, the charter and private schools have become significantly more racially and economically diverse, with each sector now serving a student body that is majority minority and more than 75% economically disadvantaged."
The Forum's research also highlights extensive school closings, restructurings, and openings across all sectors. In 2003-04, there were 393 K-12 schools in Milwaukee, but 10 years later there were 293. These figures actually understate the degree of fluctuation, as 173 schools that were open in 2003-04 were closed or restructured a decade later.
"Similarities between schools sectors also extend to academic performance," adds Yeado. "Whether one looks at four-year graduation rates or state assessment proficiency levels for math and reading, there is fluctuation between types of schools. However, the far more apparent trend is that each sector is performing significantly below state averages."
Putting these two comparative analyses together yields several policy questions that are ripe for further analysis. Those include:
- What is the impact of school closings and school restructurings on staff, students, and planning?
- Does the greater number of schools in Milwaukee and the continuous school turnover mean that finding, developing, and retaining school leadership is more difficult here than in other cities?
- Do parents and students receive the kinds of information they need to make a well-considered choice in school selection?
- Why has there been an increase in the number of single race/ethnic schools in Milwaukee and what might be done to alter that trend?
These reports set the stage for a longer-term research effort by the Forum to dig deeply into the distinctive features of the city's education framework, to explore how those features truly affect academic performance and school finance, and to identify best practices that could improve student learning in Milwaukee and throughout the region.
