Little accountability for Fox Valley private schools that get millions in publicly funded vouchers
APPLETON — While private schools that participate in the state voucher program receive millions in public dollars, there is little way to know whether those schools are meeting educational expectations.
Every year, public school districts in Wisconsin get a report card from the state Department of Public Instruction. The report card gives public schools and districts an overall accountability rating from one to five stars. One means a school is failing to meet educational expectations, and three or more mean a school is meeting or exceeding them.
Only private schools that participate in the Wisconsin Parental Choice Program get report cards. The program allows low-income students to attend private school tuition-free using a publicly funded "voucher."
In the Fox Valley, many of those private school report cards are blank because not enough students took state standardized tests or there were too few voucher students attending. About 24 private schools in the Fox Valley collectively got $24.8 million in taxpayer-funded voucher payments this school year.
But only eight of those schools received state accountability ratings. The rest of the report cards were blank.
Few private schools get accountability ratings in the Fox Valley
Like a performance review, state report cards show how schools are doing in key areas like student performance on state standardized tests, growth of those scores, outcomes for the lowest-performing students and whether students are on track to graduate. Statewide report cards were released Nov. 14 for the 2022-23 school year.
The state Department of Public Instruction, or DPI, gives schools and school districts an "accountability score" from 0 to 100. That score then translates to a star rating of one to five stars.
Of the 24 Fox Valley private schools participating in the voucher program, fewer than half got accountability ratings, meaning there's no way to measure whether these schools are meeting educational expectations. That also makes it difficult to compare performance to public schools.
Private school report cards reflect just the performance of voucher students unless the school opted to have a one that measures the performance of all students. Most Fox Valley report cards, if they're not blank, only measure voucher student performance.
Here's how the eight Fox Valley private schools that got ratings did:
Fox Valley Lutheran High School: 3 stars
Grace Lutheran School: 3 stars
Mount Olive Evangelical Lutheran School: 4 stars
Neenah Lutheran School: 4 stars
Riverview Lutheran School: 4 stars
Saint Mary Catholic Middle School: 4 stars
Saint Paul Lutheran School: 5 stars
Shepherd of the Valley Lutheran School: 4 stars
How much in tax-funded voucher payments do private schools get?
In total, Fox Valley private schools received $24.8 million voucher payments this school year. Payments are allocated on a per student basis.
This year, the amount that private schools got per student increased under the new biennium budget.
The amount per student went from:
$4,200 to $4,900 per student in 4-year-old kindergarten;
$8,400 to $9,900 per student in grades kindergarten through eighth grade;
$9,000 to $12,400 per student in grades nine through 12.
According to DPI estimates, Fox Valley private schools that got the most for the 2023-24 year are:
Valley Christian School: $4.4 million
Saint Francis Xavier Catholic School System: $3.8 million
Fox Valley Lutheran High School: $3.6 million
St. Mary Catholic School System: $2.5 million
Across the state, the DPI estimates the Wisconsin Parental Choice Program will cost taxpayers $195 million this year.
How many students attend private schools on publicly funded vouchers?
The number of students who can receive vouchers is capped at 8% of a student's home district enrollment. Every year, the enrollment cap increases by 1% until the 2026-27 school year when the cap will be lifted.
For the 2022-23 school year, when the enrollment cap was set at 7%, about 2,100 students in the Fox Valley attended a private school using a voucher. That's jumped to 2,400 this year, according to the DPI.
Valley Christian School in Oshkosh has the most voucher students at 404, followed by Saint Francis Xavier Catholic School System in Appleton with 348. The private school with the smallest number of voucher students is TRIO Young Scholars in Oshkosh with six students.
Danielle DuClos is a Report for America corps member who covers K-12 education for the Green Bay Press-Gazette. Contact her at dduclos@gannett.com. Follow on Twitter @danielle_duclos. You can directly support her work with a tax-deductible donation at GreenBayPressGazette.com/RFA or by check made out to The GroundTruth Project with subject line Report for America Green Bay Press Gazette Campaign. Address: The GroundTruth Project, Lockbox Services, 9450 SW Gemini Drive, PMB 46837, Beaverton, Oregon 97008-7105.
This article originally appeared on Green Bay Press-Gazette: State report cards are largely blank for Fox Valley private schools
