MILWAUKEE – More and more Milwaukee parents are choosing to send their children to schools that are not staffed by teachers employed by Milwaukee Public Schools.

In other words, more parents are choosing schools that are not staffed by union teachers.

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That suggests that Milwaukee parents are doing their homework and acting accordingly, based on their unique legal ability to choose between traditional MPS schools, various types of charter schools, and private voucher schools in the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program.

They want the best schools for their kids, and recent studies have shown that traditional MPS schools and charters staffed by MPS teachers are not always the best choices.

In a recently published article in the Milwaukee Sentinel Journal, education columnist Alan Borsuk noted that only 56 percent of Milwaukee K-12 students are attending MPS schools, or charter schools authorized by MPS and staffed with district employees.

That’s apparently an all-time low and the continuation of a recent trend.

“The MPS share has gone down by a percentage point or two in pretty much every recent year,” Borsuk wrote. “I thought it was a big deal when it fell to 67% in the mid-2000s. By two years ago, it was 59%, and last year 57%. How far away is the day when it’s half?”

The trend makes sense from a school choice perspective, particularly when it comes to charter schools, because studies suggest that Milwaukee charters (all types)  have been outperforming regular public schools academically.

A study conducted by the Center for Research on Educational Outcomes found students in Milwaukee charter schools receive the equivalent of 40 days of additional learning in math and 28 days of additional learning in reading, according to Watchdog.org.

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A recent study conducted by the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty (WILL) determined that students attending Wisconsin charter schools “are exhibiting greater growth on average in those core areas (reading and math) than students at traditional public schools,” according to Watchdog.org.

The distinction between union and non-union schools becomes more obvious within the charter school community. Milwaukee’s independent and MPS-affiliated “non-instrumentality” charter schools have apparently been doing better than MPS-affiliated “instrumentality” charter schools.

Non-instrumentality schools are MPS charters that have a greater degree of autonomy over operations, including hiring. Neither they nor independent charters, which are authorized by the city of Milwaukee or the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, typically hire union teachers.

Instrumentality charters, on the other hand, are more tightly controlled by MPS and hire union teachers.

The WILL study determined that Wisconsin’s independent and non-instrumentality charter schools, which are mostly found in Milwaukee, perform better academically than instrumentality charters.

In other words, the freedom to hire non-union teachers, and avoid cumbersome rules like having to lay off or transfer teachers based largely on seniority, helps charters meet their academic goals.

“Although the study shows that all types of charter schools outperform traditional public schools on average in student growth in reading and math, instrumentality schools were the lowest performing of the different types of charter schools,” the Watchdog.org story said.

“As the charter school’s degree of autonomy increased, so did its student growth performance. Non-instrumentality schools performed better than instrumentality school and independent charter schools performed best of all.”

School accountability reports from the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction, published earlier this year by UrbanMilwaukee.com, illustrate how well Milwaukee schools without MPS union teachers are performing.

Of the Milwaukee schools with the 25 highest DPI accountability scores, independent and non-instrumentality charters compared very favorably to MPS-staffed schools.

Four of the top 10 schools were independent and non-instrumentality charters. The same was true for 10 of the top 30.

That’s impressive, considering that MPS controlled and staffed schools far outnumber independent and non-instrumentality charter schools.

The same trend held up in the DPI’s student growth scores for Milwaukee schools. Three out of the top 10, and nine of the top 25, were from independent or non-instrumentality charter schools.

Perhaps more parents would have stuck with MPS schools over the years if district authorities had demonstrated more flexibility. But they have stubbornly refused to allow many of their charter schools to have more freedom in hiring practices, particularly when it comes to hiring non-union teachers, according to various media reports.

Within the last few years, former MPS Superintendent Gregory Thornton “presented a plan that would have targeted 25 low-performing schools for various turnaround strategies. Thornton’s proposal was rejected by the board.,” said a story from UrbanMilwaukee.com

“Thornton’s plan was rejected because it envisioned converting some of the schools to charter schools.”

A report, from the Education Commission of the States, said that within the past few years, “Milwaukee Public Schools has created a cap on the percentage of district students (8%) who may enroll in district schools that aren’t unionized, which includes non-instrumentality charters.”

Of course some groups continue to oppose the very existence of charter and voucher schools in Milwaukee. The most vocal among them is the Milwaukee Teachers Education Association, the district’s teachers union.

But as UrbanMilwaukee.com notes about the MTEA, “It, of course, has an obvious economic interest in supporting only MPS schools which are staffed by union members.”

That’s because the union depends on revenue from dues paid by teachers. The more schools with union teachers, the more money the union makes.