The National Center on School Choice is funded by the United States Department of Education's Institute of Education Sciences. The Center exercises national leadership in school choice research, including charter and magnet schools, private school vouchers, teacher recruitment, school management, and state policymaking.

Assessing the Impact of Choice and Competition
in Milwaukee

Paul Peterson, Harvard University
William Howell, University of Chicago

This project examines whether school choice has increased student performance in the Milwaukee Public Schools system. 

The Milwaukee Parental Choice Program (MPCP) is the nation’s largest and oldest school choice program for low-income families.  A number of scholars have debated whether accountability and school choice improve public school performance.  Unfortunately, most previous research has been able to look only at average scores of all students in a given school.  Any findings drawn from such research are fraught with problems due to the mobility of students among schools, the changing demography from one grade cohort to the next, and differential testing participation rates each year.  We are currently working with the Milwaukee Public School System to acquire the individual level test score data necessary to overcome many of the problems that have plagued past studies.