What Would Happen If School Choice Loses

E arly in the fall, a far-left PAC filed a lawsuit, charging that Wisconsin’s school-choice program somehow violates the state’s constitution — hoping that our state’s supreme court, which flipped to a progressive majority last election, would whack their political lob and smack down vouchers in our state. Thankfully, on December 13 the state supreme court unanimously voted to reject the lawsuit.

School choice survives in Wisconsin, at least for now. But it remains under pressure in other jurisdictions. Last month, Illinois allowed a tuition program serving almost 10,000 students to die. Ohio and South Carolina also have lawsuits in the works seeking to strike down voucher legislation. And such lawsuits have succeeded before in Kentucky, West Virginia, and Nevada. Chicago’s Board of Education approved new district goals that include a movement away from school choice.

Even as choice will continue in Wisconsin, it’s useful to consider the counterfactual. What would have happened if the lawsuit had succeeded? What would it be like from a student’s and teacher’s perspective?

Consider a former student of mine. We’ll call him Zack. Zack’s mother works the late shift to make rent, but never misses a parent–teacher conference. Last year, our school went on lockdown several times, because local gangs threatened violence, and the Autozone across from us had police tape up after a murder the week before school began. Nonetheless, Zack outperformed students in our state’s most affluent districts, earning a place at a premier private high school.

He thinks he’s destined for the NFL. I think he’s destined for Harvard Law. Regardless, he’s proof that zip code needn’t be destiny.

If progressives had succeeded, Zack would have received a bill from his school and, without a voucher, would have had to drop out. Unions would have won, progressives would have patted each other on the back for their commitment to “social justice,” and tens of thousands of students would have been forced to return to schools with reputations for gang activity, drugs, daily violence, and barren academics. Unconscionable.

The Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty (WILL) crunched the numbers to show what this would have meant beyond the anecdotal level, and it’s an absolute tragedy. Data released from the state’s Department of Public Instruction show that over 40 percent of public schools in our state’s largest city do not meet expectations. Some schools in the district have reading proficiency rates of less than 2 percent.

According to WILL’s new analysis, if school choice were to end, Milwaukee Public Schools alone would need to hire 2,398 new teachers, build or buy 17 new schools, renovate three dilapidated buildings in their portfolio, and massively expand their transportation infrastructure overnight. As it stands, they currently have a 17,500-seat shortfall between available space and incoming students.

The state cannot Thanos-snap its fingers to create new buildings, hire teachers, organize services, and start bus routes. Instead, local districts would have to reckon with a sudden influx of the 65,000 students from the current voucher system.

I taught at a voucher-funded school in Milwaukee. Since Milwaukee passed the nation’s first voucher legislation in 1990, enterprising school leaders, teachers, parents, and administrators have built a robust alternative system to the middling offerings of public education.

There are systems such as HOPE schools and Saint Marcus, with multiple buildings serving every grade. There are stand-alone high schools, such as Milwaukee Lutheran or Dr. Howard Fuller Collegiate Academy, that are the prestigious, sought-after institutions. It’s a friendly, well-connected network. We share teachers. We attend the same conferences. We plant new schools to serve more students.

Some schools have exceptional reputations. Others less so. Nonetheless, even in the worst-performing schools, thousands of families still choose them over public alternatives. It’s a vast educational infrastructure, built with care over decades, that this decision would demolish with the flick of a judicial pen.

And lest you think that school choice is a subsidy to rich families to bankroll their exclusivity, consider that to enroll in Wisconsin’s choice system, a Milwaukee family must earn less than 300 percent of the federal poverty line, or approximately $78,000.

One of America’s persisting injustices is the state of our public-education system. Thousands of families are fed up with dismal academics, unsafe buildings, politicized instruction, and union strangleholds. Across the country, school choice has resounding public support — 71 percent generally, but even 66 percent of Democrats support it. Conservatives must be prepared for inevitable opposition to new school-choice laws, but when even a progressive supreme court shoots down a legal challenge, that signals the runway is clear and it’s time for the rest of the nation to follow.