Originally published by Wisconsin Watch.

Almost half of all private school students in Wisconsin now receive school vouchers, signaling a rapid reshaping of the state’s educational landscape powered by state taxpayers.

When it launched in 1990, the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program, the nation’s first modern private school voucher program, included just 300 students at seven secular private schools. The students came from families earning less than 175% of the federal poverty level, and state taxpayers covered $2,446 of tuition for each.
The total price tag that year: about $700,000, or $1.78 million today adjusted for inflation. It was a pittance compared to the $1.9 billion of state aid and $2.4 billion of property taxes provided to public schools in Wisconsin that year.

By 2011, enrollment in Milwaukee’s voucher program reached 23,000 students, or about three out of four private school students that year.
Former Gov. Scott Walker and the Republican-led Legislature helped spur the creation of three more private school choice programs similar to MPCP: one for students in Racine (RPCP), one for students elsewhere in the state (WPCP) and another for students with special needs (SNSP). This expansion was part of a national effort to boost private school education with support from Walmart founders, the Walton family, according to previous Wisconsin Watch reporting.

Flash forward to last school year: Nearly half (46%) of all private school students in Wisconsin received vouchers across the state’s four programs. Taxpayers this school year will spend more than $700 million to defray tuition costs for about 60,000 students. Almost all (about 96%) attend religiously affiliated schools.
The vast growth of the voucher system has helped Wisconsin’s private school system grow modestly as public school enrollment declines. Critics, particularly Democrats and public school teacher unions, describe the state as funding two school systems.

Supporting a second school system with public money

Taxpayers through school district budgets provide $10,877 for each K–8 voucher student and $13,371 for each voucher student in grades 9-12 who enrolls in one of the three voucher programs. Each student who participates in the Special Needs Scholarship Program receives $16,049. Those amounts will increase by 4%, 3.2% and 2.6% respectively next school year.

Except in Milwaukee, where the program is directly funded by the state budget, the funding is deducted from the state aid to each school district. This school year, $357.5 million was deducted.

For public schools, state aid roughly represents 45% of school funding. Federal aid, property taxes and other revenue cover the rest. Although the exact amount varies by district, public schools collected an average of $14,104 per student in property taxes and state general and categorical aid during the 2024-25 school year.

When the state redirected aid from public schools to pay for the Racine, statewide and special need vouchers, school districts were still allowed to raise revenue as if the private school student were attending the public school. So while the district pays $10,877 to the private school for a K-8 student, it can still collect roughly $13,362 in state general aid and property taxes, keeping the difference to pay for other students still in the public system.

Some cities, like Green Bay, have started adding a note to property tax bills stating the amount of money school districts levied to pay for private school vouchers.

In the meantime, Republican lawmakers proposed “decoupling bills,” which would have the state fully cover the Racine, statewide and special need voucher programs, similar to Milwaukee. That would prevent the money from passing through the public school districts, reducing the net revenue school districts have been able to collect for the past decade.

“The funding system is broken, and the link in current law between school choice funding and property taxes needs to be repealed,” said Carol Shires, vice president of operations, School Choice Wisconsin, an advocate group for the voucher system, in an email to Wisconsin Watch.

Private school market stabilizes with public funds

As homeschooling has gained considerable popularity over the past decade, the voucher program has saved many private schools from losing enrollment and likely closure.

“There really would not be a private school sector in Milwaukee, with a few exceptions, if it wasn’t for the voucher program,” said Alan Borsuk, senior fellow in law and public policy at Marquette University Law School, “because nobody had the money to pay tuition, and there was just no way to afford schools.”

Wisconsin private schools gained 1,687 students from 2011 to 2024, a stark contrast to public schools, where enrollment declined by more than 65,000 students. Homeschooling grew even more, by nearly 13,000 students.

More than half of all private schools (56%) now accept vouchers. This year, 91 private schools had 90% or more of its students participate in the voucher program.

There are fewer private schools, but more are participating in the voucher program

A Wisconsin Watch data analysis found that about half of the private schools that joined the voucher program between 2008 and 2024 grew their student population.

A debate on effectiveness

When the voucher program was introduced in Milwaukee, lawmakers envisioned the program empowering low-income parents who couldn’t otherwise afford private schools to choose where their children are educated, bridging the education gap, and improving education quality for both the private and public school systems.

”Choice gives poor students the ability to select the best school that they possibly can,” former Gov. Tommy Thompson said in a telephone interview with the New York Times in 1990. ”The plan allows for choice and competition, and I believe competition will make both the public and private schools that much stronger.”

About 35 years after the program’s introduction, people still cannot come to a consensus on whether it improves education quality.

“Taxpayers fund choice students at a lower dollar amount than they fund public school students, yet those choice students achieve better outcomes,” Shires wrote, referring to the school year 2024-25 state testing results from DPI.

The DPI data cited by the organization showed a higher average test score for voucher students compared to their peers in public schools.

However, that methodology has been criticized by reviewers affiliated with the National Education Policy Center, a university research center housed at the University of Colorado Boulder’s School of Education. The reviewers criticized the approach of directly comparing standardized test scores of voucher students with those of public school students, arguing that such comparisons are overly simplistic and misleading.

In his review, Stephen Kotok, an associate professor at St. John’s University, wrote that simply comparing average test scores between the two groups without accounting for nonrandom selection into voucher programs overlooks other factors that may influence student performance besides school quality. He also wrote that relying solely on standardized test scores to judge educational quality or productivity is a “crude” measure.

DPI uses report card systems to provide a more comprehensive review of school performances in addition to test scores. Last year, 85% of public schools and 85% of voucher schools met, exceeded or significantly exceeded expectations. However, less than half (43%) of the voucher schools were scored due to insufficient data. DPI cited small student populations and low test participation rates among voucher students for not assessing those schools.

Several recent studies indicate that the academic benefits of voucher programs are marginal.

An analysis of 92 studies on school choice students’ academic achievements published between 1992 and 2015 found a very slight rise in standardized test scores among students who transferred from public schools to voucher schools, according to Huriya Jabbar, an associate professor at the University of Southern California.

Even though earlier data tended to show positive effects from voucher programs, math scores for students who switched to voucher schools were less impressive, and even negative, particularly in newer and larger programs, according to a study by Christopher Lubienski, director of the Center for Evaluation and Education Policy at Indiana University.

Borsuk wrote that the voucher system does not improve the overall quality of education in a column for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. He noted the education quality of voucher schools varies by school, with a mixture of excellence and disappointment.

In addition, state laws do not protect private school students from discrimination as they do in public schools. Previous reports by Wisconsin Watch have found some voucher school students have faced discrimination because of their disabilities or sexual orientation.

Not just providing choice for public school students

RPCP and WPCP generally do not accept students previously registered in private schools, but the program makes an exception for grades K4-1 and 9.

This year, one in four (1,129) newly enrolled WPCP students studied in a private school the previous year — even more than the 948 students who transferred from Wisconsin public schools. Comparatively, most newly enrolled Racine students came from public schools or had not previously attended any school.

MPCP does not have a similar requirement, and DPI stopped publishing the source of enrollment data in 2006.

Bringing religion into classrooms

Enrollment at MPCP jumped in 1998 as the program began incorporating religious schools after the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled 4-2 the program didn’t promote state-sponsored religious education.

As of the 2025-26 school year, nearly all of the voucher schools are religiously affiliated.

Parents cite the religion-based curriculum, safer environments, strict discipline and small classrooms in their decision to send their children to private schools.

Parents of voucher students may opt out of the religious curriculum under the law, yet no available data show how often that happens.

“Almost 30 years now, if there have been 25 cases of opt-outs, I’d be really surprised,” Borsuk said. “If you’re going to a religious school and don’t want to be there, then why are you going to that school? It’s basically as simple as that.”

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