The legislative development and enactment of the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program: A case study of a change in the politics of education

Public policy arguments for private school choice beginning in the 1960s restated an enduring argument in America whether public monies should flow to non-public schools.;This dissertation documents enactment in the 1989--1990 Wisconsin Legislature of the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program, the first state law in the United States in this century to permit public monies to flow to private schools.;In 1988 and 1989, Republican Governor Tommy Thompson put private school choice voucher initiatives for Milwaukee schools on the legislative agenda for the first time. His initiatives were summarily rejected by Democratic legislative leadership. He negotiated a compromise on alternative legislation proposed by the Milwaukee Public Schools. Assembly Representative Polly Williams helped to kill the Governor's legislation based on that compromise.;Representative Williams had struggled unsuccessfully for years in the Legislature to end forced busing of black children to desegregate the Milwaukee public schools and to restore parental choice of neighborhood public schools. She led an unsuccessful movement to create an independent school district in Milwaukee's inner city which would have given Milwaukee's black community control of neighborhood public schools.;In late 1989, Representative Williams introduced her own legislation for parental choice of neighborhood private schools in Milwaukee. She argued that for more than a decade the Milwaukee School Board had not allowed large numbers of children in the inner city to attend neighborhood public schools. If the children of the inner city could not have a choice of neighborhood public schools then a small number of low income children should be allowed to attend neighborhood private schools that were not religious schools, at public expense.;Democratic leadership in the Assembly and Senate, for different reasons, decided to support enactment of Representative Williams' bill. Speaker Tom Loftus' decision to let the bill pass in the Assembly, if she had the votes to pass it, altered the balance of interests in the Legislature so that Representative Williams' bill would become law. Senator Gary George's decision to insert her bill in the 1990 budget adjustment bill then established with considerable certainty that the legislation would go to the Governor for his signature.