Tommy Thompson
by James C. Sherlock
Heard enough about the decline of Virginia public schools to want to examine options?
Wisconsin is decades ahead of Virginia in parental choice. Their first law on public school open enrollment dates to 1975.
In 1993, Wisconsin completely overhauled its public school system to provide broad choices for those parents whose kids were locked into poor-performing schools and school districts.
The changes were led by Republican Governor Tommy Thompson. The year after implementing the changes, Thompson was re-elected by the biggest margin in Wisconsin history.
All of these options remain so popular in Wisconsin that Democratic administrations since Thompson have not touched them.
And, yes, Wisconsin 4th and 8th graders outperformed their Virginia counterparts in both math and reading in the 2022 NAEP tests, with significantly lower learning losses.
We’ll examine all of the parental options in the Wisconsin program to see what Virginia might do that has worked there.
Public School Open Enrollment. Dick Hall-Sizemore commented on Jim Bacon’s article on the Youngkin Plan for reversing learning loss.
I have often thought of this scenario, especially when folks start talking about school choice. Let kids attend any public school they wish, notwithstanding jurisdictional boundaries.
That parental choice option has been available in Wisconsin since 1975; state financial aid has supported it since Governor Thompson’s overhaul in 1993.
The current law on full-time open enrollment is here. The law on part-time open enrollment, a child attending another district for a specific course, is here. State aid to this program and the others discussed here was established under Governor Tommy Thompson, a Republican who served in that position for 14 years.
It allows parents to apply for their children to attend public school in a school district other than the one in which they reside. Here is the Wisconsin law on admission of nonresident pupils. Here is the law on school district cost sharing.
Parents are responsible to provide transportation to and from school in the nonresident school district, except that transportation required in a child’s Individual Education Plan (IEP) must be provided by the nonresident school district. Either school district is permitted but not required to provide transportation. Low-income parents may apply to the Department of Public Instruction for reimbursement of a portion of their transportation costs.
This law, as with several others discussed here, was targeted at the 30% of the state’s population that lives in the 5-county Milwaukee metro area. It was specifically designed to give parents and kids in Milwaukee’s terrible public schools a way out.
Charter schools. Wisconsin has a robust public charter schools program, also supported by state funding since 1993. For the 2022 school year, there are 241 charter public schools serving 50,822 students in that state. The law is here.
One defining difference between Wisconsin and Virginia is that Wisconsin law lists charter school authorizers in addition to school districts.
All of the following entities may contract with a person to operate a charter school:
a. The common council of the city of Milwaukee.
b. The chancellor of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.
c. The chancellor of the University of Wisconsin-Parkside.
d. The Milwaukee area technical college district board.
e. Each technical college district board other than the Milwaukee area technical college district board.
eg. The chancellor of any institution in the University of Wisconsin System other than the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and the University of Wisconsin-Parkside.
f. The county executive of Waukesha County.
g. The college of Menominee Nation.
h. The Lac Courte Oreilles Ojibwa community college.
The law even grants a charter school governing board authority to sue its authorizing school district in order to enforce the terms of the parties’ contract.
The lack of authorizers other than school divisions in Virginia assures that the ones we have will be few and shackled to the school division that authorizes them. For parents, that is really no choice at all.
Virtual charter schools. The Wisconsin law on virtual charter schools is here. Registration doubled in 2020-21 to over 16,000 kids out of about 850,000. Comparable numbers in Virginia using full-time virtual education in that same year were 17,000 out of 1,252,000. Twelve thousand of those were in the new full-time program of VDOE’s Virtual Virginia.
Learning loss. Wisconsin public schools evidenced little learning loss during COVID compared to Virginia schools.
The reading and math scores for both 4th and 8th graders in the two states showed the same trends. Wisconsin students finished ahead in all of them.
Most virtual charter schools are accessible by expelled students.
Private School Choice Programs. The Private School Choice Programs include the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program (MPCP), the Racine Parental Choice Program (RPCP) and the Wisconsin Parental Choice Program or statewide program (WPCP) (for students living outside of Milwaukee or Racine).
These programs allow eligible students to attend a participating private school in grades four-year-old kindergarten (K4) to 12. Schools participating in the program receive a state aid payment for each eligible student on behalf of the student’s parent or guardian. New Choice students must provide income documentation showing the family income does not exceed certain income limits.
State Superintendent interventions in low-performing school districts and schools. Another signature difference between Virginia and Wisconsin is that in Wisconsin the state superintendent is empowered to intervene in low-performing districts and schools. The law is here.
If the state superintendent determines that a school district has been in need of improvement for four consecutive school years, the state superintendent may direct the school board to make fundamental changes.
Virginia needs a constitutional amendment to make this happen here. We should pursue one.
State aid achievement guarantee contracts and achievement gap reduction contracts. School district contracts with the state Department of Instruction are tied to additional funding. The contracts are just what they sound like. The laws are here and here.
Whole grade sharing. This law is written in support of small school districts of which we have more than a few in Virginia.
It permits the school boards of two or more school districts to enter into a whole grade sharing agreement that provides for all or a substantial portion of the pupils enrolled in one or more grades, including 4-year-old and 5-year-old kindergarten and prekindergarten classes, in any of the school districts to attend school in one or more of the other school districts for all or a substantial portion of a school day.
Bottom line. Tommy Thompson was elected governor four times by the people of Wisconsin. After the education reforms of 1993, Thompson was re-elected governor in November 1994 with 2/3 of the vote. It remains the highest margin of victory in state election history.
The system Thompson created remains overwhelmingly popular in Wisconsin.
In 2022, Wisconsin 4th and 8th graders outperformed their Virginia counterparts in both reading and math in the NAEP test results.
Note that not only Wisconsin, but Florida and Texas performed significantly higher than the national average on 4th grade math. Virginia students did not.
In 4th grade reading, Florida students were second behind Massachusetts for highest scores in the nation. Wisconsin finished above the national average. Virginia finished below it.
Florida kept its schools open. It showed no learning loss from 2019 to 2022 in 4th grade reading. None. Funny how that worked.
Wisconsin offers model laws for lasting change in Virginia for those who want it.
Those that do not want change are focused somewhere other than on the best interests of our children.
Updated Oct 27 at 15:00.
