Correction: Make That Milwaukee Montessori

I made a sloppy error in the section of the blog item posted Monday rounding up some recent education news. I named Downtown Montessori as a voucher school where many parents opted to have their children not take Wisconsin’s standardized exams. I meant to say Milwaukee Montessori, a private school on the west side that takes part in the voucher program. Downtown Montessori, on the south side, is an independent charter school where all the students take part in the state exams, Virginia Flynn, the head of school, said. My apologies. The blog item should have read like this:

Testing for voucher students: One of the unpublicized aspects of the voucher proposal approved last week by the legislature’s joint finance committee was a plan for students who use publicly-funded vouchers to attend private schools to continue to take the Wisconsin Knowledge and Concepts Examinations, the tests taken by public school students. But there is a twist to the decision that will make it a little tricky to compare the results from voucher schools and public schools.

Last fall, for the first time,  thousands of voucher students in Milwaukee took the WKCEs and the overall scores of the private schools were made public this spring. The results showed that there were no big differences in how students in Milwaukee Public Schools and voucher students rated. In fact, MPS outscored the voucher schools in some instances.

In his budget proposal, Gov. Scott Walker came out for lifting the WKCE requirement for the voucher schools, although each private school would have had to administer a different nationally recognized test. That led to concerns that the private schools would not be subject to the degree of accountability that goes with having test scores that can be compared with public schools.

The Republican-controlled finance committee agreed to keep the WKCE requirement, but said the results for each voucher school would be presented based on only the students who took the test. What does that mean? In some private schools, such as Milwaukee Montessori, a large percentage of parents used their legal option to withdraw their children from testing. But the overall results for those schools were presented as if those students had scored zeroes, which made the schools look pretty weak. Now, the results will be presented based on only those who take the tests, which will mean much better looking results for a school where a significant number of students opt out.

But public schools are required to report the results based ion all students, including the kids who opt out. (In general, very few do that). Therefore, there might be an issue of comparability between schools where all students are in the results pool and schools where only those who take the test are included.

This Post Has One Comment

  1. Cyndee Kennedy

    My question,Alan, is why would parents of a choice, voucher, or any otherwise private school opt to have their children ‘not’ take Wisconsin’s state standardized tests?

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