


Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers apparently thinks that when it comes to allowing parents to choose schools for their children, there are limits.
“We have plenty of voucher schools,” he said to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel last week. “We don’t need voucher money.”
The Governor was referring to a provision of the federal government’s One Big Beautiful Bill that allows states to permit 501(c)3 organizations to grant scholarships to local K-12 students. Any U.S. taxpayer can donate up to $1,700 annually to these Scholarship Granting Organizations (SGOs) and get the money back in tax credits.
But there’s a catch. The disbursement of funds must be approved by the state’s governor. And Evers has made it clear he won’t do it in Wisconsin.
Apparently, Evers thinks citizens can do better things with their hard-earned money than help needy families pay for nonpublic school tuition…
Apparently, Evers thinks citizens can do better things with their hard-earned money than help needy families pay for nonpublic school tuition, programs in public schools, as well as buy books, computers, and supplies to help their kids learn.
Besides, Evers has to keep those unions happy, right? Because we all know teachers are more important than students, right?
Although not a Wisconsin resident, I am a father of five eight-and-under children, so I know the financial burden of paying fair tuition at nonpublic schools to avoid the catastrophe at public schools. I’m grateful that my home state of Georgia offers some relief in the form of vouchers, but only if your local school ranks in the state’s bottom quarter academically.
As you can imagine, that program — the Georgia Promise Scholarship Program — is criticized on the left for “punishing” schools struggling the most, because how else can you straighten out your school but by throwing more money at it?
What boggles my mind about the Wisconsin situation is that it will cost the state nothing to participate in the program. The left blames the federal government for closing the Department of Education because it will hurt schools. Then, when the federal government comes up with a simple and effective way to help all schools, the governor says, No thanks, “we don’t need voucher money.”
This at a time when 12th-grade math and reading scores have reached a new low. This when schools desperately need to teach skills that will better prepare young people to become articulate and responsible citizens.
As long as nonpublic schools keep their doors open to everybody, everybody should have the opportunity to attend one.
I wish the greatest single provider of nonpublic schools in Wisconsin — i.e., the Catholic Church — had been mobilized to take the governor head on. Perhaps a response is in the works, but I have yet to see a statement to this effect appear on the Wisconsin Catholic Conference website.
Back in 2000, I was heavily involved in advocating for Proposal 1 in Michigan, an initiative that would have amended the state Constitution and lifted the Blaine amendment, a remnant of 19th-century anti-Catholic bigotry that prohibits the use of public funds to indirectly support nonpublic schools.
The Michigan Association of Nonpublic Schools (MANS) and the Michigan Catholic Conference joined forces with other concerned organizations to draft the proposal and raise awareness. The measure was carefully crafted to limit qualifying school districts to those with a four-year graduation rate below two-thirds. By doing so, we thought citizens would see the obvious value that we saw in targeting miserably failing schools.
You would think we would have accepted defeat after the initiative was rejected by a 31 to 69 percent margin in November of that year.
But that’s not the whole story.
When we launched the campaign in early 1999, 38 districts fell within our definition of qualifying schools. By election day, that number had dwindled to seven. While we certainly can’t claim all the credit, such improvement would have been impossible without our relentless vigor in raising awareness of why Proposal 1 was necessary.
If you can’t beat ‘em, scare ‘em.
Given that impact and others, my colleagues and I had no regret over the countless hours we spent promoting Proposal 1, even though my former colleagues in the state continue to work tirelessly to have the oppressive Blaine amendment lifted.
A key lesson from our Michigan campaign is that you must broaden your vision to see the results.
In Evers’s own state, Milwaukee — the country’s first urban school voucher program to be established (1990) — has registered lower crime rates, an august achievement for any metropolis today. Again, such a change is due to more than school choice, but Milwaukee residents widely agree that a superior school culture and the intentional cultivation of virtue in nonpublic schools have much to do with it.
It doesn’t seem Evers will be alone in refusing to participate in the federal tax credit scholarship. There’s a good chance some of the other 23 Democratic governors will decide to shoot themselves in the foot, too.
The irony is that taxpayers in those leaders’ respective states who really care about education and the future of this country will contribute to these Scholarship Granting Organizations and get the tax credit anyway. The only difference is that the funds will be distributed to needy families in other states, not theirs, and I guarantee that, if they widen their vision, they won’t miss the results.
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