Only 10 percent of Milwaukee parents use school choice to find the best academic options for their children, concluded a 2007 Wisconsin Policy Research Institute study. That’s not enough to drive the district to reform. But the results are meaningless, argues Martin West, a Brown professor of education, political science and public policy, in Education West. WPRI researcher David Dodenhoff didn’t interview or survey Milwaukee parents, West writes.
Instead, Dodenhoff bases his study on information gathered from a national sample of parents, not from anyone in Milwaukee. His approach assumes that, when it comes to school choice, the behavior of Milwaukee parents is identical to that of parents of similar demographic background nationwide, despite the fact that Milwaukee’s school choice environment is unique.
The method is akin to estimating the share of Hawaiians who surf by counting the number of surfers nationwide, no matter their proximity to a beach, the height of the waves, or the warmth of the water.
In fact, more a third of Milwaukee parents use choice to enroll their child in a charter school, use a voucher to pay for a private school or transfer to a suburban public schools. All others choose among traditional public schools in the city. Milwaukee parents have far more experience with choice than parents elsewhere. Yet the study “assumes that Milwaukee parents do exactly what parents everywhere else in the country are doing, despite the city’s unique public education options.”
I had a little problem with that methodology, too. The author is a graduate of the U of Michigan with a minor field of methodology. I’d *really* like to know what he was thinking when he committed what looks at best as an ecological error.
It also appears that he’s a hired consultant, not a part of the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute. Maybe they farmed the work out to the lowest bidder.