Wisconsin’s long-running debate over school choice has often centered on a basic question: Do students actually benefit academically when families are able to use public funding to attend participating private schools? New research examining several years of student-level data offers evidence that, at least in reading, the answer may depend in part on how long students remain in those programs.

Wisconsin has three major private school choice programs serving different parts of the state. The Milwaukee Parental Choice Program dates to the 1990-91 school year, while the Racine program began in 2011-12 and the statewide Wisconsin Parental Choice Program followed in 2013-14. Together, the programs allow eligible families to enroll their children in participating private schools rather than their assigned public schools. The new research focuses not simply on whether choice students post higher test scores at a single point in time, but on whether their academic growth changes with continued participation.

Recent research out of Wisconsin shows that students who participated in the state’s school choice programs experienced stronger academic gains than their public school peers. The study, conducted by the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty (WILL), examined the English/Language Arts scores of 100,000 students from lowto middle-income families between the 2018-19 and 2022-23 school years. Results showed that longer participation in school choice was associated with greater reading growth. Specifically, students in the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program for two years saw a gain equivalent to approximately 1.35 additional years of learning, and students in the Racine Parental Choice Program for four years experienced reading growth equivalent to nearly two additional years of learning. Students in the statewide Wisconsin Parental Choice Program for three years also experienced significant growth in reading levels. WILL Research Director Will Flanders emphasized the strength of the peer-reviewed research, stating, “This groundbreaking research provides some of the clearest evidence yet: school choice is a win for students.” He also offered this caution, “Our research should serve as a fire alarm for states evaluating new limitations or even repealing their choice programs. Make no mistake, those [school choice] students will suffer due to their misjudgment.”

That emphasis on time is one of the study’s most notable features. Rather than suggesting that changing schools immediately produces dramatic academic results, the findings indicate that the advantage became more apparent as students remained in a choice program. In Milwaukee, statistically significant gains emerged after two years. In the statewide program, the researchers reported significant gains after three years, with students who remained four years or longer experiencing reading growth equivalent to more than an additional year of learning compared with similar public-school students. Racine students likewise showed increasingly strong results with longer participation.

Researchers used student-level data from five school years and statistical matching techniques intended to make the comparison between choice and public-school students more meaningful. Students were matched using factors including their initial academic achievement, family income, grade level, race or ethnicity, English-learner status, and region. That approach matters because students attending different kinds of schools can differ substantially in background and prior performance. Comparing raw test scores alone can therefore give an incomplete picture of how much academic growth occurs after enrollment.

The research also fills a gap in Wisconsin’s school-choice literature. According to WILL, it represents the first comprehensive student-level analysis of the Racine and statewide parental choice programs and the first such analysis of Milwaukee’s program in 15 years. The Wisconsin and Racine findings were peer-reviewed and published in the Journal of School Choice. The Milwaukee analysis used similar methods but was still under review by an academic journal when WILL released its report.

The results are particularly significant because they focus on growth rather than proficiency alone. A proficiency rate shows whether students have crossed a predetermined academic benchmark. Growth measures instead ask how much progress students make over time. For policymakers trying to determine whether an educational setting is helping students advance from where they began, that distinction can be important. A school serving students who enter well behind grade level, for example, may produce substantial learning gains even if many students have not yet reached proficiency.

WILL also argues that the findings should be considered alongside the cost of the programs. Its report notes that average public-school revenue exceeds voucher funding by more than $5,000 per K-8 student and more than $2,500 per high-school student. Supporters of school choice are likely to point to that comparison as evidence that the programs can produce academic gains while educating students with fewer public dollars.

At the same time, the study is focused specifically on English/Language Arts performance, so its conclusions should not automatically be extended to every academic subject or every measure of school quality. The findings do, however, add new student-level evidence to a policy debate that has often relied on older research or broad comparisons between schools. They also suggest that evaluating school choice only by looking at students’ first year in a program may miss an important part of the picture.

For families and policymakers, the central finding is straightforward: the academic benefits identified in the study appeared to grow with time. If that pattern holds, the question surrounding school choice is not merely whether students enroll in a different school, but whether they are given enough time in that environment for measurable academic gains to develop.