Accountability problems plague voucher schools in Milwaukee, Cleveland, and Florida

Reprinted from the NJEA Reporter, December 2003

Public expectations for private and religious schools accepting vouchers are always high, and rightly so. But if the track records of programs in Milwaukee, Cleveland, and Florida are any indication, accountability is a one-way street:

• In Milwaukee, no comprehensive achievement data has been collected from voucher schools since 1995. An audit of Milwaukee?s voucher schools found only 8 percent were providing special education services. In February 2001, Wisconsin's top education official called the program "devoid of any meaningful accountability."
• In Cleveland, the city's voucher program exceeded its budget by 20 percent, and one voucher school collected nearly $70,000 in taxpayer funds for dozens of no-show students. In 1999, a news report revealed that one Cleveland voucher school was operating as a "video school," with students watching recorded lessons from an on-screen teacher.
• In Florida, public schools are graded from A to F, with students at "F" schools (for two of four years) eligible for vouchers. But private schools are not graded, so there is no way to determine whether a student is attending a private school that is academically better than the public school he or she is leaving. Florida paid $424,000 to educate 65 disabled students at the W.J. Redmond Christian Academy, which had five different addresses, including the owner's home, a motel, and an empty church hall. The state continued to send quarterly checks for voucher students, some of whom had left the school to return to a public school or another voucher school.