Letter to the Editor: The Case against Privatizing Public Schools

There are two Wisconsin gubernatorial candidates. They are diametrically opposed in their views on education. One is an educator; the other is a contractor. One is fighting for more funding for public schools; the other wants to hand out taxpayer funds to parents to choose a private school for their children.

Private voucher schools do not have better test scores in reading and math based on the results in Milwaukee. Thirty years ago, an experimental voucher program was started in Milwaukee, and there were 337 students attending a handful of private schools. As of last year in Milwaukee alone, there were 28,770 students attending 129 private schools. Over the last five years, $200 million of your state taxpayer dollars have been spent on private, mostly religious schools, according to a column in Urban Milwaukee, “Public Schools at Stake in Governor’s Race.” 

One candidate has proposed allocating $2 billion of the state’s current $5 billion budget surplus for public education, while the contractor wants to cut funding for public education and hand out your taxpayer dollars to private schools.

If the contractor wins, kids lose and Wisconsin loses. (Wisconsin is back to eighth in the nation in two years under the education candidate, according to U.S. News & World Report, from being ranked 18th for the past several years.)

If the educator wins, our kids will have a better education and not have to live with huge budget shortfalls that force teachers to leave the profession and force kids to have inferior educations.

Let’s support the educator.

Kathy Wagner

Sister Bay, Wisconsin