The School Choice Demonstration Project has published a series of reports written in the fifth and final year of its evaluation of the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program (MPCP). This review is of Report #32, which compares the test performance of MPCP students to that of a sample of students from the Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS). The comparisons…

This report is the fifth in a series of annual reports produced by the School Choice Demonstration Project (SCDP) providing descriptive information about the schools participating in the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program (MPCP). Following a brief history of the MPCP, this year's report contains descriptive statistics about schools participating in…

The School Choice Demonstration Project has published a series of reports written in the fifth and final year of its evaluation of the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program (MPCP). This review is of Report #30, a final follow up to a five-year study examining high school graduation and post-secondary enrollment rates for students participating in the…

This is the fourth-year report in a five-year evaluation of the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program (MPCP). This report features analyses of student achievement growth three years after the authors carefully assembled longitudinal study panels of MPCP and Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS) students in 2006-07. The general purposes of the evaluation are…

The Milwaukee Parental Choice Program (MPCP) is the nation's oldest and largest urban school choice program, offering private-school scholarships to low-income students in the city of Milwaukee since 1990. In the early years of the program, voucher schools were not required to test their students, though many of them did so using nationally normed…

This report is the second in a series of annual reports produced by the School Choice Demonstration Project (SCDP) providing descriptive information about the schools participating in the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program (MPCP). Following a brief history of the MPCP, this year's report contains a set of baseline descriptive statistics about…

Background/Context: At a time when educational research is recognized as capable of improving teaching and learning, it is under attack for falling short of this promise. Part of the solution lies in improving the preparation of educational researchers. Toward this goal, the UW-Madison School of Education (SOE) participated with the Spencer…

The Milwaukee Parental Choice Program (MPCP) was established in 1990 as the first urban education reform in the U.S. built around the idea of permitting parents to enroll their children in private schools of their choosing at government expense. In its first year of operation, the MPCP or "Choice" program enrolled 341 students in the…

This report is the first in a series of annual reports produced by the School Choice Demonstration Project (SCDP) that will provide descriptive information about the schools participating in the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program (MPCP). Following a brief history of the MPCP, this year's report contains a set of baseline descriptive statistics…

In February 2008, the School Choice Demonstration Project (SCDP) issued its first report on the fiscal impact of the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program (MPCP) on taxpayers in Milwaukee and the state of Wisconsin. There are two reasons to update the 2008 report. First, the figures will naturally change with the continuing growth of the voucher…

This report provides an overview of the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program and the author's plan for evaluating it over a five year period. It also presents a brief summary of the main findings of the four distinct topical reports that the author and his colleagues have completed for 2006-07--the baseline year of the evaluation. Those four…

This report focuses on the initial design, implementation and baseline results of the five-year Longitudinal Educational Growth Study (LEGS) of the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program (MPCP) being conducted by the School Choice Demonstration Project (SCDP). The LEGS will be the first evaluation of the participant effects of the MPCP using…

A report from the School Choice Demonstration Project examines issues concerning the funding formula used for the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program (MPCP). It finds that the program generates a net saving to taxpayers in Wisconsin but imposes a significant fiscal burden on taxpayers in Milwaukee. However, these findings depend significantly on how…

With the passage of 2005 Wisconsin Act 125, private schools participating in the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program (MPCP) are now required to administer a nationally normed standardized test annually in reading, mathematics, and science to their MPCP (a.k.a. "Choice") students enrolled in the 4th, 8th, and 10th grades. The law further…

The purpose of this report is to provide descriptive data regarding the test scores of Milwaukee Parental Choice Program (MPCP) students in grades 4, 8 and 10 in reading, math, and science, as reported to the School Choice Demonstration Project 2008-2009. The tables, graphs, and histograms presented in this paper provide a snapshot of these…