Parents in Wisconsin are voting with their feet. Or at least their kids’ feet.
More than 260,000 Wisconsin K-12 students exercise some form of educational choice, according to a new study by the John K. MacIver Institute for Public Policy.
Choice in education is not the exception, it is the norm in Wisconsin,. Our MacIver Educational Choice Census shows that parents across Wisconsin embrace alternatives to the public school that bureaucrats dictate upon them based solely on where they live.
The MacIver Educational Choice Census reveals that 261,301 Wisconsin school children are educated in a place other than their traditional, geographically-assigned public school. This includes private schools, choice schools, virtual schools and other public charter schools, those who are homeschooled and those who participate in the state’s cumbersome and narrow open enrollment window. That figure is up 17.7 percent from the 222,086 children from the last MacIver census.
Statewide, more than 25 percent of students exercised choice, and in Milwaukee, almost four out of every five students exercised some form of choice over where they’ll attend school. That’s right. Nearly eighty percent.
Yet politicians still fret over giving parents more options. They embrace the 19th Century delivery model that would force students who wish to be publicly educated into attending the building assigned by the bureaucracy. The Choice Census shows that the people get it. Now if only the establishment would follow suit.