Want more?  Pay more.  A simple philosophy of allowing those who want more from government to pay more...read on.

Before the change, there was no trust outside the schools. There was radical trust inside some schools among their staff and families but every time someone from a school stepped forward with a self- evident idea of how to create more of these wonderful kinds of communities of learning, nothing happened. There has to be trust of parents and trust in the teachers. They can and will use the money better than the central administrators. Even a fool can put his jacket on better than a wise man can do it for him.

At first the voucher was $2-3,000 per student, but when a voucher is at $2,000, its effect is to get rid of the bottom end students. Then, when the full $8,000 was available to parents, the district schools responded. And the enrollment figures show Milwaukee Public Schools have beaten the voucher schools. Full choice is the necessary catalytic agent. Enrollment in Milwaukee did not decline; instead from 1990 to 2001 it increased from 97,168 to 101,744. Private school enrollment declined by 10% from 27,800 to 24,100. Rather than a drain on the district, the real per pupil spending for the MPS also rose during the same period from $7,646 to $9,502. Amazingly, at the same time the Milwaukee choice program increased our enrollment, achievement went up. The largest gains have occurred in schools with the greatest number of low-income students and with no complementary decline for schools with more affluent or white enrollments. At the 4^th grade, scores rose in science, math, social studies, and stayed constant in reading and language arts. At the 10^th grade level, scores rose in every subject, and all, except math, rose more than 10 percentile points. Our graduation rate rose from 37% to 68%.

Milwaukee now has 1,500 students in open enrollment to other districts; 2,400 in new MPS Partnership (contract) Schools; 18,000 in MPS specialty, early childhood, and K-8 schools; 7,000 in new MPS charter schools, 10,900 in private independent and religious schools, and 3,600 in city and UW- Milwaukee sponsored charter schools. About 43,400 students, a third of MPS students, are now in these
new options.

What's next? I am tired of schools taking away soccer, music, and the parents complaining. The parents who want these services need more of a say. So I want to decentralize the money down to the level of the parents. I want to give every parent a credit card for $200 per year in educational expenses.

The rich white folks are useless; the system gives them what they want, and more time is OK by them. But for underserved kids it becomes serious. Things have to change. No amount of building, funding, or collaborating will make much difference if the fundamental delivery vehicle is wrong. Milwaukee's public school revolution challenges the nation to recognize that our accustomed definition of 'public education' is both historically inaccurate and operationally ineffective. The most important division among schools is not religious or secular, denominational or interfaith, governmental or independent, private or public, but good and bad. Poor children deserve, more than anyone, public education worthy of its proud history and name.