GOP makes the right move on school choice

Bill would take the state most of the way, but there’s just one problem

By a wide margin this past week, the Wisconsin state Senate voted to go full bore on school choice, a vote long overdue but congrats go out nonetheless to the GOP for taking a much-needed step toward universal school choice, which puts parents fully in control of their children’s education and takes it out of the hands of bureaucrats.

The bill would open school choice to all Wisconsin families by removing state enrollment caps, family income limits, and grade entry points, and it would create individual scholarships for children in public schools to take courses from an approved provider. Funds could also be used to pay for educational materials and resources offered by a wide variety of education providers.

Of course, with Evers as governor, the bill doesn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of being enacted. But it is a major statement about what will happen when a new governor is elected, and it is yet another reason piled atop the growing mountain of reasons that a new governor should indeed be elected.

Naturally, liberals are screaming. On the one hand the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign (WDC) said it would siphon scarce resources away from public education, and it also pointed out that the expansion of the program would cost property taxpayers outside of Milwaukee about $577 million dollars in additional property taxes.

A couple of points …