Guiding Principles

These beliefs underlie our guiding principles:

• Each child is unique. An array of educational options, whether private, charter, or traditional public, will best meet diverse needs.
• Parents know best what their children need and deserve the freedom to choose the school or other educational setting best for their child.
• Schools and other educational providers require education freedom that leads to a diverse array of options and provides incentives for innovation.
• Each child has value, and that funding should be student-based, not set by the type of school a child attends.
• These principles guide us:
• We trust parents to choose the best schools for their children.
• All families deserve educational freedom.
• Private schools require autonomy, especially in choosing curricula and methods of instruction.
• Excessive regulation wastes educational resources and stifles innovation, narrows the diversity of educational options, and reduces the role of parental choice.
• Funding should follow students regardless of the type of school they attend.

We urge you to join us in supporting these beliefs and principles and opposing measures to limit educational freedom for families. A further discussion of our guiding principles follows.

We advocate wide-ranging educational freedom for Wisconsin families and educators. We support:

Educational choice for all families. Public support is now provided to all Wisconsin families who choose charter schools, traditional public schools, or private schools in Wisconsin’s Special Needs Scholarship Program. Only the Milwaukee, Racine and statewide parent choice programs limit eligibility based on income. We estimate approximately half of parents statewide are ineligible to participate.

Freedom for educators to make decisions on educational programming. The goal of educational choice is to provide families a wide range of choices that enable them to choose options that align with their family’s values and faith as well as with their children’s passions and learning styles. To ensure that private schools are free to be as diverse as the children and families they serve, they require autonomy in the areas of curriculum and instruction, staffing, religion and religious practices, schedule, family and staff policies, and other core elements of educational programming.

Student-based funding. Per-pupil funding varies based on the type of schooling a family chooses. Private schools in the Milwaukee, Racine, and Wisconsin (statewide) programs receive substantially less than traditional public schools. The same is true for independent charter schools. Funding should follow students equally regardless of the sector a family selects.

Simplification of private school choice programs. The programs differ from each other and are encumbered with unnecessary regulation. This diverts resources from educating students and discourages high-performing schools from joining.

Removal of barriers that limit family access to private school choice, charter, and open enrollment options.

Measurement of School Success. There is no one-size-fits-all student and therefore no single educational solution or definition of success that applies to all students and families. Families value many factors when considering the educational environment best for their children (faith/values alignment, safety, flexibility, educational philosophy, location, academic outcomes, educational style, etc.). We oppose using test scores or similar measures as conditions for participation in state school choice programs. We support using measures of academic achievement only used for transparent data sharing to inform families and not to make centrally driven decisions such as whether a school may participate in the choice program. Finally, we support focusing more on measures of academic growth than on measures of academic attainment to level out the playing field for all students and educators and ensure we are not penalizing schools and educators who are serving children with the least amount of resources and who are starting the furthest behind.