Good schools in Milwaukee are scarce, study finds
Gary Porter
Kailon McGhee, 9, (right) quizzes Kris Williams using flash cards during Jen Beilke’s third-grade math class on Wednesday at Siloah Lutheran School, 3721 N. 21st St. The school was among few in Milwaukee ranked as "performing schools."
Northwest, north and south side areas have greatest needs
Milwaukee school performance: Performance and location of traditional public schools, charter schools and private schools that participate in the Milwaukee Parental Choice (voucher) program, according to the study.
Tucked on the south side of Milwaukee off Oklahoma Ave., Veritas High School has about 180 students, a college preparatory curriculum and a reputation for helping kids succeed.
According to a new study, the charter high school also has the distinction of being the only non-selective public high school in the city meeting at least 75% of the state's standards in reading and math.
That scarcity of good schools available to all children in Milwaukee - especially at the high school level, on the north and northwest sides, and in a few areas of the densely populated south side - is the focus of a new study by a Chicago nonprofit that has been tracking the distribution of "performing schools" in urban districts since 2003.
Overall, the study found that out of 353 schools studied in the 2008-'09 school year, only 13% of students enrolled in traditional public schools, charter schools and private schools that participated in the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program (and that reported data for the study) were attending a school that met Wisconsin's state standards in reading and math.
When the bar was lowered to include schools meeting at least 75% of the state's standards in reading and math - the cutoff to be considered a "performing" school for purposes of the study - the percentage of kids being served with a decent education rose to about 33%.
Add in the selective schools that require an entrance exam before admitting students - which are generally higher performers - and that number rose a bit higher to 37%, said Jose Cerda, vice president of public policy and communications at IFF, a community development financial institution that supports nonprofits in the Midwest."Our position is that all students should have the option of attending a performing school near where they reside," Cerda said. "What we're trying to do is rate the capacity of this system - where does it have the most capacity and where does it have the least?"
Cerda said Milwaukee would need between about 56,000 and 78,000 more seats at performing public and private schools to serve all children in the city.
The range of more than 20,000 seats exists because the majority of private schools that participated in Milwaukee's voucher program that year did not submit test-score data for the study. In 2008-'09, 126 private schools participated in the voucher program, but only 23 submitted data for the study. It's possible that some of those 20,000-plus children are at schools that meet most or all of the state's standards, researchers said.
ZIP code analysis
To rank the need for performing school options in Milwaukee, the IFF study analyzed the schools in each of the city's 20 ZIP codes and found:
• More than two-thirds of the need for performing schools is located in eight ZIP codes: 53209, 53206,