MacIver: More WI Students Utilize School Choice Here Than Ever Before

Nearly 26 percent of the state's children attended institutions other than their traditional neighborhood public school in the 2011-2012 academic year. In Milwaukee, Wisconsin's largest district, this figure rose to more than 81 percent of students.

An examination of Wisconsin's K-12 student population from the last school year shows that more students are utilizing school choice here than ever before.

In all, more than 262,000 Wisconsin students used some form of school choice. Rather than attending their local classrooms, these pupils chose options like charter schools, virtual charter schools, open enrollment transfers to other public schools, private schools, and homeschooling. Nearly 90,000 of these students came from Milwaukee. In all, there were 1,014,619 K-12 students in Wisconsin.

While the overall enrollment dropped by nine thousand students between the 2009-2010 and 2011-2012 school years, the number of students exercising some form of choice in education rose by more than 2,000 pupils. After statewide school choice saw a 1.1 percent decline in 2010-2011, the 2011-2012 numbers rebounded with an increase of 2 percent across all forms of school choice.

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