Private Voucher Schools asking for Higher Taxpayer funding. Be Careful When Republicans Dole out Taxpayer money to Private Sector.

First, the good news (kind of):

JSonline: High school graduation rates increased for both Milwaukee Public Schools students and low-income city children using vouchers (went up 5 percentage points) to attend private schools in 2008-'09, but voucher students are still more likely to graduate than their public school peers, according to data released Monday.

MPS officials continue to question the accuracy of "Graduation Rates for Choice and Public School Students in Milwaukee," funded by School Choice Wisconsin, a voucher advocacy group. They point out that the names of the schools analyzed in the study are withheld, which makes it difficult to tell whether similar schools are being compared. Also, voucher schools generally do not serve as many students with special education needs, which can affect diploma rates.

The cost difference is often used by voucher advocates as the reason more schools should be added and the program expanded. But once private business smells taxpayer dollars, they want more…

Susan Mitchell, president of School Choice Wisconsin, wrote in the report's introduction that the benefits for high school students in the voucher program are at risk because of "increased regulation and funding cuts. Private schools receive $6,442 from the state for each qualifying voucher student. That's about half of what MPS receives in state aid for each child it serves.

The principal of Milwaukee Lutheran High School, Paul Bahr, said Monday that his school may cut the number of seats open to incoming ninth-grade voucher students by one-third next year unless state aid is increased.

How long before voucher schools demand the same rates as their public counterparts? Not long. As far as the graduation rates, even the study author John Robert Warren isn’t buying the big result most advocates will latch onto.

Warren has said that higher graduation rates for students in the voucher program do not prove that private schools in the program caused those results. For example, parents might be more actively involved in helping their children graduate.